Tekst

It is 2036. An enormous asteroid is going to collide with Earth. If it isn`t stopped, it will crash into the Pacyfic Ocean, creating a devastating tsunami. What happens next?

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And no, that isn`t a question about the plot of a science fiction film. It`s a question about a very real danger.

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There are milions of asteroids in our solar system, and if a large one collided with the Earth, it would be a disaster.

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If a large asteroid crashed into the Earth tomorrow, what would happen? If it landed in a large city, milions of people would die instantly.

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The impact would couse massive destruction - imagine colliding with a rock as big as a mountain and travelling at 20 kilometres a secound!

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If the asteroid landed in the ocean, there would be a giant tsunami. housands of cities around the world would flood.

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If the asteroid landed in a very remote area of land, there would be fewer deaths at first. However, the explosion would send a huge cloud of dust into the Earth`s atmosphere

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This dark cloud would block the light and it would be impossible to feed people.

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The short answer is: it has happened already. About 65 milion years ago, most life on Earth disappeared-including all of the dinosaurs.

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We now believe that this was because of a huge asteroid which changed the Earth`s weather. The asteroid was at least 10 km in diameter and landed in Maxico, leaving a hole more than 180 km across.

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On the morning of 30 June, 1908 , a much smaller asteroid (about 90 metres across) exploded in the sky above central Siberia.

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Nobady lived nearby, so there were no deaths - altough the explosion was so powerful that it destroyed an enormous area of forest and knocked a man off his chair 112 km away

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Scientists believe that there are two main options: we could blow up the asteroid with nuclear weapons or we could make it change direction. Both options have their disadvantages. If we blew up the asteroid, it could break into smaller pieces.

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Each piece could then be a danger! There are several ideas about how to make an asteroid change direction, but nobody knows which would work best -and it`s impossible to test the technology. And if we failed, we probably wouldn`t get another chance.

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