There have been many science fiction novels about killer asteroids destroying Earth. And it has already happened – most notably 66 million years ago when an asteroid caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. But now, new AI is helping to severely reduce the risk of an asteroid impact by identifying potential threats.
It is easy to spot large asteroids in the night sky with even a less advanced telescope – they often glint with reflected sunlight. But smaller asteroids – those that are around 100 meters long, still large enough to decimate a city or a state – are much harder to detect, even by huge telescopes like the ELT or the Keck Telescopes.
With four photos needed to pinpoint an asteroid’s location and direction, it has long been difficult to use conventional asteroid-finding algorithms to determine if a projectile is hazardous or will pass by Earth at a safe distance. But a new algorithm might change that. Only requiring two photos to determine an asteroid’s risk factor, the Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) can easily determine if an asteroid is actually threatening Earth.
From its place on a large telescope in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, ATLAS has already discovered several potentially-hazardous asteroids, including 2022 SF289, a 600-foot-long space rock that was missed by earlier technology.
The Rubin Observatory, set to begin its survey of the sky in 2025, can see exceedingly faint objects, including those that are small and easily hidden inside the brightness of nebulae and other bright stars and asteroids.
Most scientists are very optimistic about both the Rubin Observatory and ATLAS. Mario Jurić, an astronomer at the University of Washington, predicts that, although it took 200 years it took to go from one known asteroid to a million, we could discover as many in three to six months.
It is easy to spot large asteroids in the night sky with even a less advanced telescope – they often glint with reflected sunlight. But smaller asteroids – those that are around 100 meters long, still large enough to decimate a city or a state – are much harder to detect, even by huge telescopes like the ELT or the Keck Telescopes.
With four photos needed to pinpoint an asteroid’s location and direction, it has long been difficult to use conventional asteroid-finding algorithms to determine if a projectile is hazardous or will pass by Earth at a safe distance. But a new algorithm might change that. Only requiring two photos to determine an asteroid’s risk factor, the Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) can easily determine if an asteroid is actually threatening Earth.
From its place on a large telescope in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, ATLAS has already discovered several potentially-hazardous asteroids, including 2022 SF289, a 600-foot-long space rock that was missed by earlier technology.
The Rubin Observatory, set to begin its survey of the sky in 2025, can see exceedingly faint objects, including those that are small and easily hidden inside the brightness of nebulae and other bright stars and asteroids.
Most scientists are very optimistic about both the Rubin Observatory and ATLAS. Mario Jurić, an astronomer at the University of Washington, predicts that, although it took 200 years it took to go from one known asteroid to a million, we could discover as many in three to six months.