Scientists predict devastation if asteroid Bennu strikes Earth in 2182 - Jordan News
The rocky object called Bennu is classified as a near-Earth asteroid, currently making its closest approach to Earth every six years at about 186,000 miles (299,000 km) away. It might come even closer in the future, with scientists estimating a one-in-2,700 chance of a collision with Earth in September 2182. اضافة اعلان So what would happen should Bennu strike our planet? Well, it would not be pretty, according to new research based on computer simulations of an impact by an asteroid with a diameter of roughly three-tenths of a mile (500 meters) like Bennu. Aside from the immediate devastation, it estimated that such an impact would inject 100-400 million tons of dust into the atmosphere, causing disruptions in climate, atmospheric chemistry and global photosynthesis lasting three to four years. "The solar dimming due to dust would cause an abrupt global 'impact winter' characterized by reduced sunlight, cold temperature and decreased precipitation at the surface," said Lan Dai, a postdoctoral research fellow at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea and lead author of the study published this week in the journal Science Advances. In the worst-case scenario, the researchers found that Earth's average surface temperature would decrease by about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius), average rainfall would fall by 15%, there would be a reduction of up to 20-30% in plant photosynthesis and a 32% depletion in the planet's ozone layer that protects against harmful solar ultraviolet radiation.
The impact of a Bennu-sized object - a medium-sized asteroid - on Earth's land surface would generate a powerful shockwave, earthquakes, wildfires and thermal radiation, leave a gaping crater and eject huge amounts of debris upward, the researchers said. Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Roya News
28-05-2025
- Roya News
Strong chance average warming will top 1.5C in next 4 years, says UN
The United Nations warned on Wednesday that there is a 70 percent chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 would exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius international benchmark. The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN's weather and climate agency. 'We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record,' said the WMO's deputy secretary-general Ko Barrett. "Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet." The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels – and to pursue efforts to peg it at 1.5C. The targets are calculated relative to the 1850-1900 average, before humanity began industrially burning coal, oil and gas, which emit carbon dioxide (CO2) – the greenhouse gas largely responsible for climate change. The more optimistic 1.5C target is one that growing numbers of climate scientists now consider impossible to achieve, as CO2 emissions are still increasing. Five-year outlook The WMO's latest projections are compiled by Britain's Met Office national weather service, based on forecasts from multiple global centres. The agency forecasts that the global mean near-surface temperature for each year between 2025 and 2029 will be between 1.2C and 1.9C above the pre-industrial average. It says there is a 70 percent chance that average warming across the 2025-2029 period will exceed 1.5C. "This is entirely consistent with our proximity to passing 1.5C on a long-term basis in the late 2020s or early 2030s," said Peter Thorne, director of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units group at the University of Maynooth. "I would expect in two to three years this probability to be 100 percent" in the five-year outlook, he added. The WMO says there is an 80 percent chance that at least one year between 2025 and 2029 will be warmer than the current warmest year on record: 2024. Longer-term outlook To smooth out natural climate variations, several methods assess long-term warming, the WMO's climate services director Christopher Hewitt told a press conference. One approach combines observations from the past 10 years with projections for the next decade (2015-2034). With this method, the estimated current warming is 1.44C. There is no consensus yet on how best to assess long-term warming. The EU's climate monitor Copernicus believes that warming currently stands at 1.39C, and projects 1.5C could be reached in mid-2029 or sooner. 2C warming now on the radar Although "exceptionally unlikely" at one percent, there is now an above-zero chance of at least one year in the next five exceeding 2C of warming. "It's the first time we've ever seen such an event in our computer predictions," said the Met Office's Adam Scaife. "It is shocking" and "that probability is going to rise". He recalled that a decade ago, forecasts first showed the very low probability of a calendar year exceeding the 1.5C benchmark. But that came to pass in 2024. 'Dangerous' level of warming Every fraction of a degree of additional warming can intensify heatwaves, extreme precipitation, droughts, and the melting of ice caps, sea ice and glaciers. This year's climate is offering no respite. Last week, China recorded temperatures exceeding 40C (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas, the United Arab Emirates hit nearly 52C (126F), and Pakistan was buffeted by deadly winds following an intense heatwave. "We've already hit a dangerous level of warming," with recent "deadly floods in Australia, France, Algeria, India, China and Ghana, wildfires in Canada," said climatologist Friederike Otto of Imperial College London. "Relying on oil, gas and coal in 2025 is total lunacy." Davide Faranda, from France's CNRS National Centre for Scientific Research, added: "The science is unequivocal: to have any hope of staying within a safe climate window, we must urgently cut fossil fuel emissions and accelerate the transition to clean energy." Other warnings Arctic warming is predicted to continue to outstrip the global average over the next five years, said the WMO. Sea ice predictions for 2025-2029 suggest further reductions in the Barents Sea, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk. Forecasts suggest South Asia will be wetter than average across the next five years.
Ammon
15-05-2025
- Ammon
Gravity study shows why the moon's two sides look so different
Ammon News - An exhaustive examination of lunar gravity using data obtained by two NASA robotic spacecraft is offering new clues about why the two sides of the moon - the one perpetually facing Earth and the other always facing away - look so different. The data from the U.S. space agency's GRAIL, or Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, mission indicates that the moon's deep interior has an asymmetrical structure, apparently caused by intense volcanism on its nearside billions of years ago that helped shape its surface features. Keep up with the latest medical breakthroughs and healthcare trends with the Reuters Health Rounds newsletter. Sign up here. The researchers discovered that the lunar nearside flexes slightly more than the farside during its elliptical orbit around Earth thanks to our planet's gravitational influence - a process called tidal deformation. This indicates differences in the two sides of the lunar interior, they said, specifically in the geological layer called the mantle. "Our study shows that the moon's interior is not uniform: the side facing Earth - the nearside - is warmer and more geologically active deep down than the farside," said Ryan Park, supervisor of the Solar System Dynamics Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, opens new tab. The moon's nearside is covered by vast plains, called mare, formed from molten rock that cooled and solidified billions of years ago. Its farside has much more rugged terrain, with few plains. Some scientists have hypothesized that intense volcanism within the nearside that caused radioactive, heat-generating elements to accumulate on that side of the mantle drove the surface differences observed today. The new findings offer the strongest evidence yet to support this notion. The researchers estimated that the nearside mantle on average is about 180-360 degrees Fahrenheit (100-200 degrees Celsius) hotter than the farside, with the thermal difference perhaps sustained by radioactive decay of the elements thorium and titanium on the nearside. "The moon's nearside and farside look very different, as shown by differences in topography, crustal thickness and the amount of heat-producing elements inside," Park said. The moon's diameter of about 2,160 miles (3,475 km) is a bit more than a quarter of Earth's diameter. The lunar mantle is the layer located beneath the crust and above the core, spanning a depth about 22-870 miles (35-1,400 km) under the surface. The mantle makes up roughly 80% of the moon's mass and volume and is composed mostly of the minerals olivine and pyroxene, similar to Earth's mantle. "The fact that the detected asymmetry in the mantle matches the pattern of the surface geology - for instance, differences in the abundance of the approximately 3-4 billion-year-old mare basalts (volcanic rock) between the nearside and the farside - suggests that processes which drove ancient lunar volcanism are active today," said Caltech computational planetary scientist and study co-author Alex Berne, affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on the design of gravity sensors for missions to the outer solar system. The researchers spent years analyzing data from GRAIL's Ebb and Flow spacecraft, which orbited the moon from December 2011 to December 2012. "Our study delivers the most detailed and accurate gravitational map of the moon to date," Park said. "This enhanced gravity map is a critical foundation for developing lunar Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems, which are essential for the success of future lunar exploration missions. By improving our understanding of the moon's gravity field, it contributes to establishing a precise lunar reference frame and time system, enabling safer and more reliable navigation for spacecraft and surface operations," Park added. The same approach employed here using gravity data to assess the lunar interior, the researchers said, could be applied to other bodies in the solar system such as Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Ganymede, two worlds of interest in the search for potential life beyond Earth. In the meantime, the new findings add to the understanding of Earth's eternal companion. "The moon plays a vital role in stabilizing Earth's rotation and generating ocean tides, which influence natural systems and daily rhythms," Park said. "Our knowledge of the moon has expanded through human and robotic missions that have revealed details about its surface and interior, yet many questions about its deep structure and history remain. As our closest neighbor, the moon continues to be an important focus of scientific discovery." Reuters
Ammon
09-04-2025
- Ammon
Europe just had warmest March on record
Europe experienced its warmest March since records began, as climate change continues to push temperatures to unprecedented levels, European Union scientists said on Tuesday. Globally, last month was the planet's second-warmest March on record - exceeded only by March in 2024, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin. March continued a run of extraordinary heat, in which 20 of the last 21 months saw an average global temperature of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. Last year was the planet's hottest on record. The global average temperature in March was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in pre-industrial times. The main driver of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, according to the scientific consensus among climate scientists. Samantha Burgess, strategic lead at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which runs the C3S service, noted that Europe also experienced extremes in both heavy rain and drought. Europe last month recorded "many areas experiencing their driest March on record and others their wettest March on record for at least the past 47 years," Burgess said. Climate change is making some regions drier, and fuelling the heatwaves that can make droughts more severe, by enhancing evaporation rates, drying out soil and vegetation. But the warming of the planet also exacerbates the heavy rainfall that can cause flooding. That's because warmer air holds more moisture, so storm clouds are "heavier" before they eventually break. Arctic sea ice fell to its lowest monthly extent last month for any March in the 47-year record of satellite data, C3S said. The previous three months had all also set a record low for the respective month. C3S' temperature records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850. Reuters
