The asteroid Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian serpent god, is rapidly approaching the Earth. Its collision with our planet can lead to an explosion, in strength overlapping the power of all nuclear bombs of mankind, and the affected area can be equal to the area of an average European state. Boris Shustov, director of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, came to this conclusion, however, he believes that the likelihood of a collision with an asteroid is still not high, nevertheless, the date of a possible catastrophe is set for 2036.
As Shustov said at the conference of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics. Tsiolkovsky at Roskosmos, the size of the approaching asteroid is about 300 meters, which means that the threat is not global, but regional, hanging over the Earth - the affected area in the event of a catastrophe could be the area of an average European country. But if a body 1-2 kilometers in size collides with the Earth, then it will no longer matter where it falls, since the consequences will be fatal for the entire planet.
There is another version of the development of events, announced at a scientific conference at the Moscow State Technical University. N. E. Bauman as an employee of the NPO. Kirill Lavochkina Quiet. He suggested that the result of the collision of Apophis with the Earth could be an earthquake comparable in strength to the earthquake in Haiti.
Shustov is of the opinion that the consequences of an asteroid fall will be similar to the consequences of a nuclear explosion, excluding radiation. The power of a possible explosion could even exceed twice the power of the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in 1883, when almost the entire Indonesian island was flooded. Thus, a catastrophe in a collision with Apophis will be only regional in nature: a region the size of a European country or, say, a metropolis and its suburbs, such as, for example, Moscow, can be erased from the face of the planet.
At the same time, the scientist is confident that the fall of the asteroid Apophis will not lead to such fatal consequences as "nuclear winter". However, the exact location of the disaster is not yet known, scientists have outlined only a possible risk zone. In their opinion, it stretches from the Urals, along the Russian border with Kazakhstan and Mongolia, across the Pacific Ocean, Central America, the Atlantic Ocean and ends off the coast of Africa.
However, there is no reason for panic yet. The probability of Apophis falling to Earth is only one in 100 thousand. According to Shustov himself, with a greater degree of probability, it is possible to predict the fall of an asteroid body to the earth in 800 years, and just something like that is worth fearing.
Other Russian scientists are of the same opinion. “The fact is that the asteroid Apophis is not particularly dangerous. But it can be used to test the system, the creation of appropriate protective spacecraft, - added the head of Roscosmos. It is known that negotiations on the issue of protection against space threats have already been held with the European Space Agency and the European Union, and so far remained at the level of negotiations.
However, Russian scientists are independently looking for a way to prevent tragic events, they are already developing schemes for protecting the Earth from cosmic bodies. And these searches are very relevant: scientists believe that the Earth is constantly threatened by about a thousand asteroids, over 100 meters in size. “About 7 thousand objects approaching the Earth have been discovered, of which 1000 - 1200 are potentially dangerous. Of these, about 150 bodies are from 1 kilometer in size, and about a thousand bodies from 100 meters to 1 kilometer,” Shustov specified. In general, kilometer-long bodies are constantly monitored as part of the NASA Spaceguard program. Because they, according to scientists, are the main threat to the Earth, since when a planet collides with a 10-kilometer cosmic body, civilization will be under the threat of extinction.
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Summarizing his speech, Shustov recalled the popular hypothesis of the extinction of dinosaurs: a body 10 kilometers in size struck the Yucatan Peninsula and led to the extinction of 80% of all life on the planet. Due to this, man and other mammals, who previously occupied a subordinate position in relation to dinosaurs, entered a promising evolutionary branch. Therefore, the fatality of the consequences of a possible collision with an asteroid of our planet has not yet been proven.