Asteroid Awareness Day

Bryce Cullen
Staff Writer

       More than one hundred years ago, a massive asteroid impacted Russia. This was called the Tunguska event, the largest asteroid event to be witnessed. It occurred in 1908 when the asteroid made contact on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in a remote Siberian forest in Russia. This collision was so massive people from more than forty miles away were thrown from their porches and chairs by the tremendous force created from the impact. The force of the impact leveled around 1,000 square miles of forest. To put that number into perspective, it is the equivalent of wiping almost the entire state of Rhode Island. Respected scientists including Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins have supported this past event. They are using this event in an attempt to educate the public of the dangers of possible deadly asteroids that could strike Earth.  

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          With this incident scientists everywhere are on board to make June 30 known as Asteroid Day. On this day seminars, talks, and movies with apocalyptic asteroids will be taking place around the globe in order to spread awareness that the threat of an asteroid is a possibility. Estimates show that there are more than a million asteroids that have the potential to hit Earth. Now that is a big number although scientists have only discovered one percent of these asteroids. However, on the bright side, there is now something called the “100X Declaration” which pushes us to grow upon our asteroid discovery rate 100 times to 100,000 in the next decade.