MONTREAL – Every day, the earth is getting heavier by the equivalent of the weight of the Eiffel Tower, about ten thousand tons, due to the meteorite fragments that settle there.
International Asteroid Day, celebrated annually on June 30, marks the “largest known meteorite impact in recent history,” which occurred on March 30, 1908 in Tougounska, Russia, recalls Guillaume Poulin, park ranger and astronomy technician specializing in am Parc national du Mont Megantic.
“The asteroid was between 50 and 60 meters in diameter; It exploded in the atmosphere a few kilometers from the surface, he says. There was no ground impact or crater, but it was quite a devastating event and trees were felled up to 2,000 kilometers away.”
More recently, another asteroid, much smaller this time, suffered the same fate on February 15, 2013, still in Russia. “It happened in an inhabited area. The blast shattered the windows of houses and several thousand people were injured by broken glass,” says Mr Poulin.
Although the probability of a large asteroid hitting Earth head-on is small, it is not non-existent.
However, technology makes it possible to calculate the trajectory of these rocky celestial bodies.
According to Loïc Quesnel, coordinator of scientific activities at the Montreal Planetarium, the unpredictable arrival of an asteroid in our atmosphere that could destroy the planet, as we saw in certain disaster movies at the beginning of the millennium, is not so realistic.
“For at least twenty years, the sky has been observed every night with automated photos that track the movement of objects,” puts the communicator into perspective. With these observations and calculations, we are able to more accurately detect asteroids that might cross Earth’s orbit.
“There’s no real deployment at the moment,” he continues. For decades and even centuries there is no apparent danger.”
Learn from asteroids
Asteroid fragments are rich in history and knowledge.
On September 24, the Osiris-Rex probe is scheduled to return to Earth after a seven-year journey in space. She will bring a sample of the asteroid Bennu.
Because the Canadian Space Agency is involved in this unprecedented mission, and in particular has provided instruments for the probe, part of this sample is being studied in the country.
“The asteroids have changed little since their formation, which dates back to the birth of the solar system,” says Mr. Poulin. They are therefore remnants of it, and if we can study samples of it, we can learn a lot about the conditions that contributed to the formation of the universe as we know it.
Cameras look to the sky
Neophytes tend to confuse an asteroid, a meteor, and a meteorite. In fact, it is the same object in different states, explains Mr. Quesnel.
“The asteroid is a big rock in space; The meteor is the luminous phenomenon that occurs when the asteroid enters Earth’s atmosphere. and the meteorite is the rock fragment that has resisted decay and will make it to Earth,” he explains.
Recently inaugurated after several years of work, the Montreal Planetarium’s DOME network (for detecting and observing METers) has 11 cameras distributed about a hundred kilometers apart in the south of the province.
Your goal is to detect luminous events in the Quebec sky. These are then analyzed by an algorithm that attempts to determine their nature. In short, we are now documenting the movement of asteroids in real time across the sky.
“We used to rely on testimonies from people who saw a luminous phenomenon,” says Mr. Quesnel. It was very difficult to find the right timing for what was happening in the sky.
Dozens of tons of material fall to Earth every day, mostly in the form of dust, as asteroids and meteorites largely disintegrate upon their entry into the atmosphere, which occurs thousands of kilometers away.
About twenty meteorites land on Quebec territory every year. Since Quebec is very rich in forests and lakes, finding the trail of a meteorite can be difficult. The DOME project will facilitate this process.
“We’re not trying to detect large meteors, but rather the light signature of a small meteorite impacting Earth,” explains Mr. Quesnel.
“If one camera detects an intense light phenomenon and other cameras record it, we can try to calculate the asteroid’s trajectory before it hits Earth to determine where we might find the meteorite,” he continues.
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