Large and small meteorites arrive on Earth from distant Space. These remnants of ancient collisions of massive cosmic bodies in the form of gray stones are scattered throughout the territory of our planet. So, for example, one of the many astronomical objects observed by scientists - an asteroid numbered "2003IL61" appeared as a result of a giant collision beyond the orbit of Neptune billions of years ago two massive bodies, the largest of which is the size of the planet Pluto.
A huge cosmic body with a diameter of 1500 kilometers collided in the immense Universe with the same large "lonely wanderer", and parts in the form of large and small asteroids at great speed went into free space flight. Can such uncontrollable heavenly boulders, which broke off millions of years ago from some cosmic giant, hit our Earth? How to protect our little blue planet at the time of a cosmic strike?
It is the brutal collisions in Space that can rightfully be considered the most important in the life of the Universe, because the cosmic energy ejected during such colossal impacts and the arising gravity exert an incessant effect on bodies in airless space. Nothing can prevent such collisions of celestial bodies chaotically moving in different directions and at times intersecting on their way: asteroids, comets, planets, and even collisions of entire Galaxies with each other.
Humanity owes in principle its appearance and existence in this world to one of such destructive, saturated with powerful energy, collisions of a planetary scale. The formation of planet Earth, like other planets of the Milky Way systems, took place in the Solar Nebula about 5 billion years ago.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA have been jointly working on a deep space exploration project for 30 years. With the help of the Hubble low-orbit telescope, scientists have obtained a space image of two colliding spiral-shaped galaxies, located 350 million light-years from Earth. The satellite image shows that as a result of such a giant merger of galaxies, powerful gravitational forces have already begun to deform them. Usually, such processes of collision of cosmic bodies of such a level stretch over many millions of centuries.
The star cluster of the Milky Way, in which mankind lives on the globe, according to astronomers' calculations, after 4 billion years, will also collide with the nearest space neighbor - a galaxy called Andromeda. The most dangerous place during large-scale galactic mergers is in the vicinity of the very centers of both galaxies, which are supermassive black holes. From colossal impacts during galactic mergers, often gigantic force throws some large stars to the very outskirts.
The gigantic cosmic structure of our Universe, uniting myriads of stars, gas, cosmic dust and dark matter around the central disk of the Milky Way, was also formed as a result of the great collision of miniature galaxies.
Investigating the origins of the Milky Way's halo, based on materials from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, scientists have uncovered the chemical composition of a dozen stars from the central superclusters A13 and Tri-And. Similar to DNA analysis, chemical composition allows scientists to accurately determine the relationship of cosmic bodies and the relationship of stars to the original population. For example, dwarf galaxies and globular star clusters have different initial populations, they have different chemical compositions.
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In the course of studying stellar spectra, the ultra-large telescope of the European Southern Observatory (VLT) in Chile is additionally used to refine the data analysis. The researchers compared the chemical compositions of stars from the inner and outer discs of the Milky Way. Scientists have come to the conclusion that initially all stellar populations of our galaxy were formed from one original cosmic population. Then they were literally pushed to the borders of the Universe by other more weighty dwarf galaxies, which at that time were rushing at great speeds through the Milky Way. In scientific astronomical circles, this process is called "galactic eviction".
More recently, according to astronomers, a huge 300-kilometer space body with a unique landscape and impressive size was revealed on the outskirts of the solar system. This is the asteroid 2004EW95, which is now passing the Kuiper belt. The object is removed from the Earth at 4 billion kilometers. According to scientists, the space object "2004EW95" broke off as a result of a strong impact in the asteroid belt in the region of Mars and Jupiter, when it was pushed to the border of the solar system by another huge object. And earlier in 2013 it became known about the approach of another asteroid "2013US3", surpassing the Eiffel Tower in size.
In early May 2018, astronomers calculated that a whole armada of small asteroids, registered by the B612 Science Foundation, was approaching the Earth. However, the NASA space agency focused only on finding the largest objects in heavenly space. Scientists learn about approaching objects with a diameter of less than 140 meters only 2 hours before they fall to the earth's surface.
On April 17, 2018, another large asteroid "2018GE3", reaching 50 meters in diameter, swept very close to our planet. Scientists from Arizona discovered this celestial object too late in their laboratory. The space body, which is 6 times larger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite, approached the earth by 200,000 km at a speed of about 107,000 km / h.
This incident makes earthlings think again that science still cannot predict all the unexpected moments of the life of the Cosmos. It is necessary to direct all the power of the new ultrasonic weapons and the latest developments in the latest generation technologies - to protect our tiny inhabited planet named Earth, so lonely in the entire universe.