MIT's Artem BurdanovPhoto: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
CAMBRIDGE, Mass, (WBZ NewsRadio) — A team of MIT researchers has identified a band of orbiting 'small' space rocks that each one could someday pose a threat to planet Earth.
In all, the researchers including Artem Burdanov discovered 138 asteroids ranging in size from a bus to the size of Gillette Stadium.
As a comparison, the asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs was estimated to be approximately 10 kilometers across, about as wide as Brooklyn, NY.
So, while the asteroids the MIT team discovered are significantly smaller than that, each one still poses a potential threat to Earth.
In fact, Burdanov said the smaller the asteroid, the bigger the chance it could hit Earth.
He said that he and members of the team were able to identify the asteroids moving through the asteroid belt by stacking layers of telescope images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to see which way the asteroids are heading. "We used a clever technique to find asteroids that are hidden in the noise," Burdanov said.
Being able to locate and track an asteroid is critical to determining its threat level and whether action can be taken to prevent a collision with Earth. "These objects can still make a lot of damage," he warned.
If one of these asteroids ever did hit Earth, the impact would be comparable to a nuclear bomb or bombs coming down from space.
In 2014, an asteroid called the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded over Siberia causing an impact scientists said released approximately 30 times as much energy that was released by the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.
Another space research team is tracking an asteroid it said could potentially hit Earth in 2032, although the odds of that happening are estimated to be 1-2%.
WBZ News Radio's Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.