These are the asteroids to worry about

Summary by Krater

Prof. Dave Jewitt discusses the threat of asteroid impacts on Earth, exploring how often they hit, why they are difficult to detect early, and the limitations of potential deflection methods.

From the video

Answers: How likely is a dangerous asteroid to hit Earth and can we stop it?

• asteroid impacts
• Chelyabinsk meteor
• Near-Earth Objects
• asteroid detection limits
• asteroid deflection methods

What it concludes

• We have detected about a million asteroids, but only 24000 are Near-Earth Objects.
• Observational limits and dynamical chaos mean we can only predict asteroid positions and potential impacts about 100 years into the future.
• A 10-kilometer asteroid impact like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs happens roughly every 100 million years.
• There are roughly 1000 1-kilometer asteroids capable of causing massive damage, and most have not been detected yet.
• We currently have no effective way to deflect a 1-kilometer-sized asteroid heading toward Earth.