Last Monday, the American Geophysical Union had its annual meeting in San Francisco. Award-winning scientist Joseph Nuth from NASA's Goddard Space flight Center warned that the Earth is due for an extinction-level event. A catastrophe like a comet or asteroid strike that we have not prepared for.
According to The Atlantic, Dr. Nuth, a seasoned senior scientist at NASA recounts that until the 1980's after Walter Alvarez postulated the threat of comets and other extraterrestrial objects wiping out everyone on the surface of the planet, comets were not actually considered as potential threats.
Since then the space agency realized that we are basically defenseless and cannot fend of the dangers of collision. NASA started watching potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) in space. These were mostly asteroids from 5,000 back then, the number of PHOs has now ballooned to 700,000.
The Earth remains defenseless which is why Joseph Nuth urged the United States government to build 2 spacecrafts: one dedicated to observe an identified PHO and another designed to intercept it by dislodging the asteroid or comet from its orbit or blowing it up.
Nuth's recommendation also calls for revising NASA's launch time from the existing 5 years to 12 months or less. Ideally the spacecrafts would be built and remain in on the ground and launched when needed.
Recounting our close brush such an event when a comet passed dangerously close to mars and was discovered less than 2 years upon what could have been a collision. Nuth made the case for being able to launch fast a necessity.
Knowing that his recommendations would cost several hundred million dollars to build, Joseph Nuth made it clear that it was an advice given from a scientific standpoint to anyone who would listen. He also made clear that his assumptions are independent and his own and does not in anyway represent NASA.
Quite contrary, NASA officials released a statement to The Post that there is no need for alarm and this is something we shouldn't worry about until the next century, according to Fox News.
The statement further assured the public that the space agency is taking all the precautionary steps and proactive measures in their PHO observations. At the same time they are also devising aggressive planetary defense strategies with American and overseas partners.
