Asteroids seem important to me because they will be one of the objectives of present and future space exploration, they will also be one of the objectives of future space mining, and most importantly because they pose a real risk and their effects in the past have shaped important aspects on our planet, they have even determined the evolution of species because they have caused mass extinctions.
Asteroids are dangerous, yes, some of them, but the risk is much smaller than what many media outlets show and it is already known that you have to alert when the alert is real, the wolf exists, but shouting that the wolf is coming only to attracting an audience is bad for those of us who want to do real research on asteroids and also only serves to create unjustified and irrational fear.
One of the recent discoveries contains a very curious story; there is a French wine called “Trou du Météore” or “domain of the meteorite” it is not a famous wine, although it has the most curious label design (I love the label design of this wine)
The vineyards for this wine are located in a crater 220 meters in diameter and 30 meters deep. The owners of the vineyards have always said that the crater was the product of a meteorite impact, but about 60 years ago a scientific study ruled out that possibility, although it did not clarify what the origin of the crater could be, that study said that there were two issues that were missing with respect to qualifying it as a methodical impact crater, and that is that the raised ring around the formation was missing, the second factor was that it did not were able to detect any magnetic anomalies.
These types of anomalies are caused because the impact breaks the surface rocks hundreds of meters deep, causing them to stop contributing to the terrestrial magnetism, but it turns out that now a more detailed study carried out by Frank Brenker, a Goethe astrochemist University Frankfurt in Germany has confirmed that it is a meteor crater.
The new analysis thus discovered that there is a slight magnetic anomaly, in addition, they also discovered microspheres resulting from the impact, although they have not yet given dates of when it occurred and the size that the object that impacted could have, the investigation and its results were presented by the Brenker at the 54th Houston Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
The statistics on the impact of asteroids on earth are being built, practically because we need to know how often an impact occurs, the review is constant because more and more discoveries are being made and a map has been created of the different impacts it has suffered the earth.
The white dots are the officially recognized impact craters, as you can see the map is a bit strange, because there are high concentrations around the Baltic Sea, in Northern Europe, in North America, there are also high concentrations and in Australia while there are other regions of the planet that seem empty, this does not mean that asteroids prefer to impact in those places, there is a geological reason, it is that in the land that is older the impact craters can be preserved for a longer time, but there is also a human reason the countries that have geologists and researchers and that have dedicated efforts to search for this type of craters are also where the greatest number of impact craters are found.
That is why I am sure that in South America there must still be many to be confirmed and discovered, and in Africa as well, I think there are many gaps in the Sahara and of course also in Asia among other regions.
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! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!
