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What If You Could See Asteroids In the Night Sky?
An anonymous reader writes: As part of Asteroid Day a 360-degree video rendering the night sky with the population of near-earth asteroids included has been created by 'Astronogamer' Scott Manley. The video shows how the Earth flies through a cloud of asteroids on its journey around the sun, and yet we've only discovered about 1% of the near earth asteroid population.
If it's just a count of objects, "1%" doesn't mean much anyway. We should be much more interested in mapping Mass. A 1kg asteroid is mostly harmless (to Earth, though it could be catastrophic for man-made satellites). This may be a faulty assumption, but I would think the larger, more dangerous objects would be detected first. If so, 1% of the total number may represent something like 50% of the total mass of all NEAs. If that's true, it's far less ominous than saying "99% of potential Earth-impacting asteroids are currently hidden!!!1!"
Whether we knew/know about an asteroid strike doesn't change whether the strike will occur. As such, the actual likelihood of an asteroid hit is the same, either way. What has changed is our knowledge that it is going to occur.
Put differently, there are a finite number of asteroids in the solar system. If one othem is on a trajectory that will eventually impact the earth, the likelihood of an earth impact is unchanged whether we know it or not. Likewise, if none of them are on a trajectory to impact earth, the likelihood of an earth impact is unchanged whether we know it or not.
At this point in time, there are only two options - either the earth will be hit or it will never be hit. The more we know about the asteroids and their trajectories does not change those results (unless by knowing, we have a means to divert the collision, which currently, we can't).