February 15, 2023, 21:59 – BLiTZ – News Astronomer, Director General of the Center for Planetary Defense Anatoly Zaitsev, in an interview with NSN, spoke about the dangerous consequences that a meteorite fall to Earth can lead to. According to the scientist, the larger the meteorite, the lower the likelihood of it falling to Earth. At the same time, the frequency of small celestial bodies falling onto the planet is about once every ten years.
According to Zaitsev, the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which is considered relatively small, happened in a deserted place. At the same time, if this happened in the area of location of military or man-made facilities, such as nuclear power plants, a real danger could arise.
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“Astronomers are now registering the passage of about 300 asteroids a year in the sphere of gravity of the Earth, the radius of which is one million kilometers. Something flies by in this zone almost every day, ”Zaitsev quotes the publication.
He called for the creation of a system to protect the Earth from falling meteorites. According to the astronomer, this topic was originally raised in the 1990s. Now technical capabilities have increased, so efforts should be directed to combat objects approaching the Earth.
Earlier it was reported that the head of the laboratory of meteoritics and cosmochemistry of the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry named after V. I. Vernadsky (GEOKHI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences Dmitry Badyukov shared information about the annual fall of about 55 tons of meteorites on the Earth. At the same time, about 2-3 tons of celestial objects fall to the share of the Russian Federation.
Read more in the BLiTZ article.
