Scientists discover a substance that can protect Earth from asteroids

This Tuesday the 24th Australian scientists from the Faculty of Science a land And Planetaries published a study in small pieces rocky It was collected from the asteroid Itokawa, which was explored during Expedition from the Japanese Space Agency JAXA. The discoveries may contribute to understanding how planetary defense works a land and how things behave Void potentially Dangerous.

According to information published by G1, the crumbs Collected by the team is smaller than a bead rice it’s the asteroid500 meters and formed 4.2 billion years ago, 2 million km from a land. Fred JordanResearch author and school teacher SciencesExplain the significance of the results:

In short, we found that the Itokawa It’s like a giant space pillow and it’s hard to destroy. Unlike homogeneous asteroids [aqueles formados por objetos]Itokawa is not formed by a single piece of rock, but belongs to the rubble mound family, which means that it is made entirely of stones and loose rocks, and almost half of it is empty space.”

Importance

The importance of identifying the structures is due to the fact that if an asteroid with the same characteristics were heading towards Earth, Scientists You already know how to behave. This explains Nick ThamesCo-author of the study and member of the team planetaryon a note:

The good news is that we can use this information to our advantage. If anyone asteroid Discovered too late for a kinetic boost, we can use a more aggressive approach, such as a shock wave from a nuclear blast to push this asteroid rubble pile off course, without destroying it.”