ERSC 1P92 (Extreme Earth)

Week 2
Module 2: The Solar System and Space Objects

Nebular Hypothesis
 The Sun and the bodies that orbit around it are thought to have begun as a nebula (an
immense cloud of gas and dust in space; also called a “molecular cloud”).
 The nebula that became our solar system began as a large irregularly shaped mass of gas
and dust in space. Within the nebula the pressure of the gases act outwards to cause it to
expand while gravitational forces (forces that pull bodies towards each other) act to cause
the nebula to collapse onto itself.
 The force of gravity prevailed over gas pressure and the nebula collapsed and began to
spin.
 As the diameter of the nebula was reduced, the rate of spin increased.
 Due to the interaction of the pressure and gravitational forces, as the nebula was spinning
it became flatter and formed a broad disk as the nebula continued to collapse.
 As the diameter of the nebula was reduced, the rate of spin increased.
 Due to the interaction of the pressure and gravitational forces, as the nebula was spinning
it became flatter and formed a broad disk as the nebula continued to collapse.
 Within the cloud swirling eddies developed drawing matter towards their centres to form
the protoplanets.
 As the protosun became even hotter gases were driven off the inner region of the Solar
System. The protoplanets became solid planets and continued their orbit, governed by the
initial spin of the swirling nebula.
 The Nebular Hypothesis is attractive because it explains many features of the Solar
System. For example, the orbits of the planets lie in a plane with the sun at its center.
This plane is called the "orbital" plane or "ecliptic" plane and it is also the plane of the
early disk-shaped nebula.
 The Nebular Hypothesis also explains why the planets mostly rotate in the same direction
and their axes of rotation are nearly perpendicular to the orbital plane. This direction of
rotation was inherited from the direction of spin of the eddies in the spinning nebula that
formed the protoplanets.
 Venus and Uranus do not rotate in the same direction as the other planets.
 Venus’s rotational axis is at right angles to the plane of the planets (the ecliptic plane) but
it rotates in the opposite direction compared to the other planets.
 Uranus rotates about an axis that is almost parallel to the plane of the planets.
 Modern thinking is that the rotations of both planets were affected by major collisions
with other bodies very early in their history.
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The Inner Planets

 Earth-like, "rocky" planets: metallic cores, dominated by silicon and oxygen compounds.
 
 Diameter as a
Name Diameter (km) Distance from Sun (AU)*
% of Earth's diameter
 
Mercury 4,880 38% 0.367
Venus 12,103 95% 0.723
Earth 12,742   1.0
Mars 6,779 53% 1.52
Astronomical Units (AU): 1 unit is the distance from Earth to the Sun, 149,597,900 km.

The Outer Planets

 “Gas Giants” with thick atmospheres that become denser and hotter towards their rocky
cores.
Name Diameter (km) % of earth Distance from Sun
Jupiter 139,822 1,097% 5.2
Saturn 116,464 914% 9.5
Uranus 50,724 398% 19.2
Neptune 49, 244 386% 30.1

Small Solar System Bodies

 These objects orbit the sun but are not planets of any type nor are they satellites of any
type of planet (a satellite being a body such as moon that orbits a planet).
 Small solar system bodies are made up of solid material from the nebula that either did
not accumulate into planets or did form larger objects but were shattered into many
fragments during collisions near the end of planet formation.

Asteroids
 In comparison to the planets, asteroids are mostly relatively small solar system bodies
that are largely made of rocky and/or metallic materials and are found throughout the
solar system.
 The region with the largest concentration of asteroids is found just beyond the orbit of
Mars out to about half way to Jupiter’s orbit and is known as the Asteroid Belt.
 These asteroids range in size up to about 800 km in diameter, the largest object being the
object called "Ceres".
 Ceres was thought to be a planet when it was first discovered in 1801 but it was soon
recognized to be just one of many objects in this region of space.
 Just beyond the Asteroid Belt are three other clusters of asteroids.
 The Hilda Asteroids (orange dots in the above figure) form three clusters that extend
from the outer limit of the Asteroid Belt to the edge of Jupiter's orbit.
 Two other clusters of asteroids (both shown as green dots) are the Trojan and Greek
Asteroids that orbit behind and ahead of Jupiter, respectively, along the planet's orbital
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path. Note that the Trojan and Greek asteroid clusters appear to be extensions of two of
the Hilda asteroid clusters.
 The Hilda, Trojan and Greek Asteroids are in orbits that are controlled by the immense
gravity of Jupiter as it orbits the Sun.
 Note that there are many asteroids in orbit between Mars and the sun; many of these are
termed “Near Earth Objects” and include asteroids that pose the greatest risk of
collision with Earth.

Trans-Neptunian Small Solar System Bodies

 Asteroids make up the majority of small solar system bodies that orbit between Neptune
and the Sun but there are many, many more small bodies in orbits about the Sun that are
beyond the orbit of Neptune.
 These objects are called “trans-Neptunian Small Solar System Bodies” or "trans-
Neptunian objects".
 Trans-Neptunian objects contain large amounts of water-ice and other volatile
compounds and in the past this composition distinguished them from asteroids.
 However, large volumes of water are now known to make up many asteroids so this
distinction is no longer true. Trans-Neptunian objects differ from asteroids by being
located beyond Neptune.
 The objects are made up of material that was left-over from the nebula.
 The Trans-Neptunian bodies occur in two distinct regions: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort
Cloud
 Both are regions of space around our Solar system that, combined, contain up to trillions
of small, icy bodies that become comets when their orbits are disturbed by the gravity of
other objects in space and they fall towards the sun in the center of our solar system.
 Kuiper Belt: a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune, 30 to 100 AU from the Sun.
 Oort Cloud: a huge spherical “cloud” of many billions of icy bodies, surrounding the
outer limits of the Solar System and extending approximately 3 light years (about 30
trillion kilometers) from the Sun.

Interstellar Objects
 Interstellar objects are objects are the newest class of "small solar system object".
 These are objects that normally pass through the solar system, having arrived here from
"interstellar space" (the space between star systems), so that they are not native to our
own solar system. They are normally only "small solar system objects" temporarily; the
exception would be if they crashed into a solar system object during their passage
through our solar system.
 An important difference between solar system objects and interstellar objects is that the
latter are not "gravitationally bound" to any star (including the Sun). They are thought to
include objects that are compositionally similar to comets or asteroids, but the majority of
interstellar objects are thought to be icy bodies (like solar system comets).
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 Such objects are distinguished from similar objects from within our solar system by their
trajectory; an interstellar object typically follows a strongly hyperbolic trajectory
(eccentricity greater than 1) that shows it arriving from outside of the solar system and
then continuing on along a path that takes it out of the solar system after circling the Sun.

The problems with Pluto

1. It rotates in the opposite direction to most planets which inherited their direction of
rotation from the nebula.
2. It is NOT a gas giant like the other "outer" planets; Pluto is like the inner "rocky" planets,
largely lacking a gaseous atmosphere.
3. Pluto has a strongly eccentric orbit (meaning that it is strongly elliptical rather than
circular like most planets). This orbit is not consistent with most of the other planets
much more circular orbits that were established by the rotating nebula.
4. Its orbital path is tilted at 17° to the plane of the orbits of most of the other planets; again,
this orbital plane differs from the orbital planes of the other planets where determined by
the plane of the rotating nebula.
 Pluto's orbit about the Sun takes 248 Earth years and it follows a strongly elliptical path
so that its distance from the Sun varies considerably.
 The average distance from Pluto to the Sun is 5.9 billion km but it varies from a
maximum distance of 7.38 billion km to a minimum of 4.44 billion km.
 The distance from Neptune to the Sun varies from 4.45 billion km to 4.55 billion km.
 So, for parts of its orbit Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune; this was most recently
the case from January 1979 until February 1999.
 The following definition was proposed prior to the 2006 meeting and, if adopted, would
mean that 2003 UB313 would become officially recognized as a planet:
o Incorrect def - Planets: orbit a star (the sun), have enough mass to produce
gravity strong enough to make them spherical, not a star or moon of another
planet.

The outcome of the 2006 IAU General Assembly

The proposed definition of "planet" was rejected by the majority of participants and the
following three definitions were approved:
1. “Planet” is defined as a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has
sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a
hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has “cleared the neighbourhood*”
around its orbit. Note: "Cleared the neighbourhood means that the planet has used its
gravity to “absorb” or control other bodies in the vicinity of its orbit (i.e., its
neighborhood).
2. A “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient
mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic
equilibrium (nearly round) shape , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit,
and (d) is not a satellite.
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3. “Small Solar-System Bodies” are defined as all objects that are not planets, dwarf
planets or satellites of planets or dwarf planets.

Planetary update:
 The object formerly known as 2003 UB313 was officially named “Eris”, after the Greek
god of discord.
 Its moon will be named Dysomia (the daughter of Eris).
 The dwarf planet Pluto has a new official name: 134340 Pluto

How many dwarf planets are there in the Solar System?

 In 2006 there were three dwarf planets that had been formally assigned to this category of
object.
 According to Mike Brown (Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute
of Technology and the discoverer of 2003 UB313), as of February 24, 2020, there are:
o 10 objects which are nearly certainly dwarf planets, 27 objects which are highly
likely to be dwarf planets, 68 objects which are likely to be dwarf planets,
130 objects which are probably dwarf planets, and 741 objects which are possibly
dwarf planets.

Big News about a former planet now dwarf planet - Pluto

 On July 15, 2015, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto at distance of 12,500
km.

The formation of the Earth

 Accumulation of material within the nebula to form the Earth and other planets was a
three-stage process that was completed by about 4.56 Billion years ago.
Stage 1
 Dust-size particles come into close contact and "stick" together, gradually forming larger
objects.
 Turbulence in the nebula is thought to play an important role in bringing small objects
into close proximity.
 The objects grow until they have sufficient mass so that their gravitational attraction of
the larger objects pulls smaller objects into them and they grow into “Planetesimals” that
exceed 1 km in diameter.
Stage 2
 Planetesimals underwent relatively rapid accretion as they came together to form larger
objects called "planetary embryos".
 This stage saw the formation of tens to about 100 objects ranging in size from that of our
moon to the size of Mars; these large planetary embryos are often called "Protoplanets".
 This period of planet formation is thought to have taken only a million years.
Stage 3
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 Protoplanets from Stage 2 are attracted to each other due to their gravity, resulting in
massive collisions and forming larger objects that ultimately became the planets of the
solar system.
 This stage is believed to have taken 50 to 100 million years. Approximately half of the
heat within the Earth today was produced by the energy released during collisions of the
protoplanets during this stage of Earth's formation.
 During the later part of Stage 3 the Moon came into existence.

The formation of the moon

 The Lunar orbit suggests that it was captured from debris ejected from the Earth during a
stage 3 impact.
 Towards the end of Stage 3 the Earth had an ocean of molten rock; melting due to the
energy released from frequent large collisions.
 It is believed that the formation of the moon began when one or possibly two very large
objects (up to Mars in size) had oblique collisions with Earth and ejected a ring of molten
debris into orbit around the planet.
 Once in orbit the molten debris accreted (came together) in a manner similar to the
accretion of the planets.
 It is estimated that the Moon was pretty much complete after a decade following the
causal collisions with Earth. Right after its formation the moon was likely a molten
mass, but it cooled to form a solid crust when impact frequency and magnitude
diminished.
 Since its formation, the moon has slowly been moving farther and farther from Earth.
 Just following completion of Lunar construction it was in an orbit about the Earth that
was about 15 time closer than the current orbit.
 A billion years later the orbit was 4 times closer than today; it has been moving away
from the Earth ever since it formed.

Ever since the formation of the Earth it has been bombarded by debris from space.
 The following diagram shows the rate of change in the number of space objects that have
collided with Earth since it formed.
 During the third stage of planetary formation the rate at which objects collided with Earth
was a billion times the current rate of impact.
 The rate decreased rapidly as fewer and fewer objects were left in the vicinity of Earth,
having accreted to construct the planet.
 By 4.3 billion years ago the impact rate was reduced to about 20 times the current rate.
 From 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago there was a period when the impact rate rose to almost
1000 times the current rate when it is believed that a disturbance in the asteroid belt
caused an increase in the number of small bodies entering the inner portion of the solar
system.  This period is shown in the diagram below as the "late heavy bombardment".
 By 3.5 billion years ago the impact rate had fallen to current levels and has remained
more or less constant since that time.
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 According to NASA about 100 tonnes of material from space comes into Earths'
atmosphere every day, mostly as very fine particles.  On average, only one body with a
diameter of 1 metre will reach Earth each year.

Debris in space today comes in a variety of forms:

Comets
 A comet is a mixture of ices, both water and frozen gases (carbon dioxide, methane,
ammonia) and dust and are often called “dirty snowballs”.
 Comets are made up of material that was not incorporated into planets when the solar
system was formed (most comets are about 4.6 billion years old).
 Most comets have elliptical orbits about the Sun as shown in the following illustration.
Some comets orbit within the planetary region of the solar system (as in the example
below) whereas others have an orbital path that takes them very far out into the Oort
Cloud, taking millions of years for a complete orbit about the Sun.
 Most comets began as trans-Neptunian objects but their orbits have been disturbed in
such a way as to produce new orbital paths that circle the sun.

Anatomy of a Comet
 For most of its orbit about the sun a comet is just a solid mass made up mostly of ice and
frozen gases along with dust and other solids.  This solid mass makes up the nucleus of
the comet and it is very hard to see against that blackness of space.
 However, once a the dark solid mass of a comet approaches the Sun two changes happen:
1. The nucleus heats up and the water ice and solid (frozen) gases melt and change
to a gaseous state.   As a result of melting, dust and other solid debris that had
been frozen into the nucleus is released.  The liberated gas and solid particles lag
behind the moving comet to form two tails (see below for details) that extend
away from the nucleus.
2. Ultraviolet light from the sun causes the gas and dust to fluoresce or glow so that
the entire comet, including its tails, becomes prominently visible.  As the comet
comes closer to the sun it becomes more brilliant and its tail becomes longer as it
crosses the night sky.
 Coma: this is the brightest part of the comet and is a glowing dense cloud of water,
carbon dioxide and other neutral gases derived from the nucleus.
 Dust tail: composed of smoke-sized dust particles driven off the nucleus and come
behind after the comet has passed.
 Gas tail: these are charged gas ions that are released from the nucleus.

Where do comets come from?

 Answer: the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.
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Asteroids
 Asteroids are relatively small (meters to less than 800 kilometers), dense objects that
orbit the Sun.  
 Most are not massive enough to develop a spherical shape so that many of them are
irregular in shape.  
 They are largely made up of inner solar system material that was not formed into planets
or fragments of planets produced by collisions early in the history of the solar system.
 Asteroid Gaspra
o Like most asteroids, Gaspra has a heavily cratered surface due to billions of years
of exposure to smaller objects that have been drawn into it by its gravity.
 Asteroid Ida
o Ida is large enough to have its own satellite in orbit around it.
o Ida's Satellite (Dactyl) is 1.5km in diameter
 Asteroid 25143 Itokawa
o This is a relatively small asteroid 690 by 300 metres that circles the sun in an orbit
that crosses Earth's orbit. It is particularly notable because it appears to be an
aggregate of broken up rock material with little observable cratering on its
surface.
 Astroid Eros
o Eros is a large asteroid (33x13x13km) with an orbit approximately 17,800,000km
from the Sun.
o Eros rotates with a strong wobble due to a giant gouge that may be a scar from a
past collision?
o Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker (NEAR Shoemaker) spacecraft
orbited and then touched down on Eros in 2000, the first human contact with an
Asteroid in history. The following link will load an excellent animation that was
produced by NASA of the landing on Eros.

Ceres - more than just an asteroid!

 NASA's Dawn mission visited Ceres in the Asteroid Belt over 2015-16, came to within
375 km of the surface of the dwarf planet/asteroid.
 It's great to be an earthling over 2014 and 2016 and be able to watch Rossetta, Dawn and
New Horizon as they provide the first ever glimpses of parts of space that have been, at
best, blurry, pixelated images.
 The following image is a full view of Ceres and it is followed by a shot of Ceres taken on
May 4, 2015, when Dawn was 13,600 km from the asteroid.

The Classification of Asteroids

 Asteroids are classified on the basis of the light that is reflected from the surface of the
object.  One such measure is the proportion of light reaching a surface that is reflected
back from that surface; this measure of reflectivity of an object is called its "albedo" and
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it varies from 0 (no light is reflected which would appear as a very black object) to 1.0
(all of the light is reflected which would appear as a bright object).
 The three most common types of asteroids are:
o C-type: Extremely dark asteroids with albedo of 0.03 (only 3% of light reaching
the surface is reflected).  Over 75% of all asteroids are this type and they are
thought to be "stony" bodies with a composition comparable to the composition of
solids in the nebula.
o S-type: about 17% of all asteroids of this type which is relatively bright (albedos
range from 0.10 to 0.22) and they are thought to be made of the metals nickel-iron
mixed with rocks that are similar to those making up the Earth's lithosphere.
o M-type: making up the majority of asteroids that are not C- or S-type, these
asteroids have albedos in the range 0.10 to 0.18 (overlapping with S-type) and
they are believe to be almost pure nickel-iron.

Absolute magnitude and size of asteroids

 The Absolute Magnitude (normally denoted by the capital letter H) of an asteroid is
essentially a measure of how bright it is and brightness will vary with the asteroid's size
and its albedo.  For constant albedo the brightness increases with the size of the asteroid;
for constant size the brightness increases with the albedo of the asteroid. 
 due to the manner in which absolute magnitude is calculated the smaller the magnitude
the larger the size of asteroid.
 The absolute magnitude of an asteroid may be used to estimate its size.  However,
because the exact albedo of an asteroid may not be known, the size that is determined
from absolute magnitude will span a range that reflects the natural range in variation in
the albedo of asteroids.
 For example, an asteroid with magnitude of 3.0 ranges in size from 670km to 1490km. 
An asteroid with a magnitude of 20 will range in size from 270m to 590m in size.

Meteoroids, meteors, meteorites, and bolides

 Meteoroid: a piece of stone or metal that travels in space (smaller than an asteroid, from
dust size to a metre in diameter)
 Meteor: a meteoroid that falls towards the Earth, heating up due to friction and glowing
as it crosses the sky.
 Meteorite: a meteor that lands on the Earth’s surface.
 Bolide: a large, particularly bright meteor that often explodes (sometimes called a
"fireball").
2.7
 Today there is considerable concern about space objects colliding with Earth, despite the
paucity of recorded strikes directly on humans:
o Ancient records from China indicate that people have been killed by falling
meteorites; no such deaths are well documented from modern times.
o A meteorite killed a dog when it fell in Egypt in 1911.
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o Elizabeth Hodges, of Sylacauga, Alabama, was given a terrible bruise on the side
by a falling meteorite in 1954.
o A young boy was struck on the head by a meteorite that had been slowed down by
the leaves of a banana plant in Uganda in 1992.
o On February 15, 2013, the Chelyabinsk bolide exploded over Russia and its shock
wave resulted in 1491 injuries, largely from glass and debris but also included
temporary blindness due to the brightness of the fireball. There were no reported
injuries directly attributable to meteorite fragments hitting people.
o In 2009 Gerrit Blank (see below) claimed to have been hit in the hand by a
glowing pea sized meteorite. His claim is widely believed to have been a hoax!

 So why the concern today?

 Three events over the 20th Century heightened concern that objects in space may
pose a serious risk to humans and all other life on Earth.  These events were:
 The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) Extinction Event
 (Formerly known as the "Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) Extinction Event)
 Recognition that a major impact led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and much other life
led to serious consideration that a similar event could happen at any time!
 If you recall, at the end Module 1, we learned about Luis and Walter Alvarez, who found
the first evidence that the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other
groups of organism was likely the result of the collision of a large space object with Earth
66 million years ago.  This was the first good proof that an object or objects from space
could have devastating effects on the Earth.

The Tunguska Event

On June 30, 1908, at 7:30am a 15 megaton blast was felt over a large area of Siberia (the
Hiroshima nuclear explosion was about 0.02 megatons; 750 X Hiroshima).
 The blast was an airburst (explosion) of a 60 m diameter asteroid.
 The explosion was heard in London England.
 Over 60,000 trees were flattened over an area of 2000km2
 This was the first such atmospheric explosion of an object from space that had been well
documented. The magnitude of the blast and its pattern of devastation indicated that even
an object as small as 60m in diameter could have locally devastating affects if one
exploded over a city. The following map shows the extent of damage if such an object
like that over Tunguska exploded over St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9)
o In 1992, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9) passed near to Jupiter when it broke up
into at least 21 separate fragments, up to 2 km in diameter. The pieces dispersed
over several million kilometres along its orbit as shown in the image below.
o
o Between 16 July 1994 and 22 July 1994 the fragments impacted the upper
atmosphere of Jupiter.
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o
o This was the first collision of two solar system bodies ever witnessed (and it was
watched worldwide on television).
o The first fragment struck Jupiter with energy equal to about 225,000 megatons of
TNT creating a plume which rose about 1000 km above the planet.

A later fragment struck with an estimated energy equal to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (about
600 times the estimated arsenal of the world). The fireball rose about 3000 km above the surface
of the planet.
The multiple collisions between very large objects and Jupiter clearly illustrated that such
catastrophic events still happen in our solar system and they can happen anywhere at any time
and they can be far, far worse than the collision that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
These three events illustrated that:
 Such impacts were possible and not just the stuff of SciFi.  We could see it happen (with
the aid of space telescopes).
 Major impacts can have a devastating effect on all life on Earth.
 Even minor impacts on Earth (Tunguska) that have taken place in recent record could kill
millions and cause billions of dollars in damage.
 Governments and insurance companies developed concern regarding the risks and costs
of such events.
These events caused scientists and politicians to pause and think about what is known about the
risk of space objects to the Earth.  The answer was repeatedly the same: very, very little.
In light of these three 20th Century events researchers have focused on several questions:
 What has been the frequency of impacts with Earth?
 How many objects are close enough to Earth to pose a risk?
 What happens when an object of a given size arrives at Earth?
 How do we assign a level of “risk” to space objects?
 What does the geologic record tell us about major impacts (the past is the key to the
present)?
Frequency of Impacts
The following is based on estimates of modern objects and the geological record of impacts
worldwide.
These are average values; large events can happen at any time!

The average time between impacts can be resolved for smaller regions of Earth to evaluate
human risk:
 
For example, in the diagram above it can be seen that a Tunguska-class impact (60m diameter
object) can be expected to take place somewhere on Earth once every 300 years.  However, of
greater interest, in terms of the outcome of such an event, is how frequently such an event can be
expected over populated areas of the Earth.  The probability must be weighted by the proportion
of the area of the Earth that is populated by humans.  For example, 
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 Average interval between impacts for the entire Earth (100% of the Earth's surface)= 300
years.
 Average interval between impacts for populated areas (which make up about 10% of
Earth surface)= 3,000 years
 Average interval between impacts for world urban areas (which make up 0.3% of Earth
surface)= 100,000 years 
 Average interval between impacts for U.S. urban areas (which make up 0.03% of Earth
surface) = 1,000,000 years 
Original source: [Link]
 
So the frequency of Tunguska class impacts on a US urban area is actually very small.  However,
as we saw earlier, such an impact over an urban area can be very deadly and destructive.
The Search for Near Earth Objects (NEO)
How many objects are out there that pose a risk to Earth?
This is a question that hadn't really been considered seriously until the latter part of the 20th
century.  While we watched Jupiter being bombarded by  huge cometary fragments we had no
real idea of whether or not there were many comparable objects in a position to collide with our
home planet.
By 1998 sufficient concern had been generated that NASA founded the Near Earth Objects
Program in an effort to, as quickly as possible, identify objects that pose a risk to Earth.
Near Earth Objects* include both Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and Near Earth Comets
(NECs) as defined below:
NEAs are asteroids that are in orbits in which they come to within 1.3 AU of the Sun;
NECs are comets in orbits in which they come to within 1.3 AU of the Sun AND have orbital
periods (time for a complete orbit) of less than 200 years.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are asteroids that come to within 0.05 AU of the
Earth and have a minimum diameter of 110m.
*Definitions are derived from information at [Link] on April 21,
2015.  Recall that AU is the abbreviation for "Astronomical Unit" and 1AU is the distance from
the Earth to the Sun.
In its first year of operation (1998) the Near Earth Program's budget was 10.5 million dollars and
it's mandate was to discover 90% of all NEOs that were 1km in size or larger over the next 10
years.  The data that is needed to fulfil this mandate comes from large field telescopes that swept
the skies taking digital photographs.  Photos from the same region of space but at different times
are digitally overlain to identify objects that displayed a particular type of motion.

It has been estimated that there are approximately 1000 NEAs that exceed 1 km in size. As of
April 21, 2015, 871 NEAs that are 1km in size or greater have been discovered; 5 asteroids
greater than 1km have been discovered so far in 2015 so it is believed that the initial target will
be reached well before the end of 2015.
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As they close in on meeting their initial mandate the focus of the search is now on discovering
90% of all NEOs that are larger than 140 m; to help achieve this goal the Program's budget was
increased to $40 million in 2014.

The following figure shows how well the program has done in discovering NEAs. The blue
region of the diagram represents all NEAs discovered over the period from January 1980 to
August 25, 2019 and the red region represents all NEAs greater than 1km in size. Note in
particular the sharp increase in the number of NEA at the beginning of 1998 when the NEO
Program was created. Note also that the number of large NEA is only increasing very slowly
over the last few years because most of them have already been discovered. In contrast, many
more smaller NEAs are being discovered every year because there remains a large number yet to
be found.

As of May 22, 2020, Near Earth Object discoveries include 110 Near Earth Comets and 22,857
Near Earth Asteroids totaling 22,967 Near Earth Objects.
Of the 22,857 NEAs, 901 are 1km in size or larger and 9,126 are 140 metres or larger.
Of the 22,857 NEAs 2,085 are Potentially Hazardous Asteroids and 156 of them are 1km in size
or larger.
When the program began in 1998 there were 500 NEOs, 447 of these were NEAs and 200 of the
NEAs were 1km or greater in size.
The Near Earth Object Program has certainly gone a long way to answering the question of
"How many objects are out there that pose a risk to Earth?".....but there are still many left to
discover.
An additional value of the findings of the NEO Program is that all newly discovered asteroids are
reported directly to the Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study
(NHATS) that began in September 2010.  The NEO Program shares its data with NHATS and
this data will inform planning for possible operations such as commercial mineral and metal
recovery in the future.  What was the topic of science fiction just a couple of decades ago will
likely become a reality in your lifetime.
As new objects are discovered their orbits are calculated on the basis of the motion observed on
photographs and as more and more photographs are collected the accuracy of the projected orbits
improves so that we know with considerable certainty where the objects will be up to hundreds
of years into the future.
The Centre for Near Earth Objects Studies web site includes a huge amount of information about
the objects that come relatively close to the Earth: [Link]
What Happens When an Object Impacts With Earth?
 
The outcomes of an object from space impacting on the Earth's surface depends on a number of
factors.  The size and speed of the object are most important because combined they determine
how much energy is released on impact.
 Asteroids approach the Earth at speeds of 15 to 25 km/sec (54,000-90,000 km/hr).
 Comets can approach the Earth at speeds up to 70 km/sec (252,000 km/hr).
 
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Depending on the mass (volume X density) the atmosphere may slow the object down to about
200 km/hr.
 
The energy released upon impact is the Kinetic Energy (denoted by "E") of the object.
Kinetic Energy = E = ½ mV2
 Where m is the mass of the object and V is its velocity.
 As the mass of the object increases so does the Kinetic Energy
 Double the mass leads to a doubling of the Kinetic Energy
 The Kinetic Energy increases with the square of the velocity; when velocity increases by
a factor of two (i.e., it doubles) the Kinetic Energy increases by a factor of 4 (four times
the value).
The available Kinetic Energy determines the outcomes of the impact.
It is crucial to understand that all large impact craters are formed by the explosive release
of kinetic energy that takes place on impact.  The explosive release of kinetic kinetic energy
produces a great deal of heat and compressional shock waves waves that travel symmetrically
outward in all directions.
Specific effects at impact can include: 
Heat wave
 Much of the kinetic energy may be converted to heat that radiates outward from the
impact or atmospheric explosion.
 Radiant heat is also derived from the temperature of the object due to friction as it passed
through the atmosphere, by compression of air, from the "fireball" if the object explodes
to release energy as light and heat.
 Can incinerate the area close to the event and start fires all around the site.
Pressure wave (atmospheric shock wave)
 Shock wave front due to compression of the air from the explosion in the air on upon
impact followed by winds that can exceed 500km/hr.
 The shock wave can knock down buildings and trees all around the site.
 Hurricane-like winds cause further devastation but, on the bright side, may blow out fires.
 The following video shows a compilation of videos showing the shock wave generated
by a 17m diameter bolide that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013.
The pressure wave produced by the Chelyabinsk bolide is reported to have caused injury
to almost 1500 people due to flying glass and other debris but no injuries were due to a
direct hit by fragments of the object.
Crater Formation
 Impact of an object on the Earth surface results in an explosion that displaces crustal
material into the atmosphere leaving a large crater on the surface.
 In general, the impact crater is 20 to 30 times the diameter of the impacting object,
depending on the nature of the material making up the surface that is impacted.
 The impact crater and its immediate surroundings are the site of complete devastation.
 We will examine crater formation in some detail a little later in this module.
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 The following photo shows Wolf Creek crater in Australia; this crater formed about
300,000 years ago. The crater is 875 metres across and its rim rises 25 metres above the
surrounding plains and the crater floor is 50 metres below the top of the rim.

Rain of small rocks and dust

 Material ejected from a crater (both asteroid and Earth material) or produced as an object
explodes in the air can travel for thousands of kilometres.
 Large debris falls relatively close to the impact whereas dust is carried in the atmosphere
for years.
 Secondary damage to anything remaining in the region around the impact or explosion.
 Hot material that is ejected can cause fire for considerable distance around the impact
site.
 Increased atmospheric dust due to an impact can cause a reduction in sunlight reaching
the Earth's surface and result in significant global cooling. 
Tsunamis
 When an asteroid impacts on a large water body (e.g., the ocean) a wave is generated that
travels very quickly over the water surface, steepening and flowing onshore along coasts.
Wave speeds have been recorded at almost 800  kilometres per hour (generated by
earthquakes, not asteroids).
 At the shoreline waves can reach over 100 metres in height and wash out buildings for
kilometres away from the shore.
 Large objects impacting on the ocean surface can generate tsunamis of much greater
magnitude than has been seen in historic times.

Earthquake
 Much of the energy released on impact will produce shock waves through the Earth, thus
generating earthquakes.
 Earthquakes produced by terrestrial processes can produce events up to approximately
9.5 on the Richter Scale (a logarithmic scale that is proportional to the amount of energy
released in the crust  due, most commonly, the breaking of rock in the crust).
 A large impacting object, like that that caused the mass extinction 66 million years ago
could generate a magnitude 13 earthquake.
 Surface shock waves can devastate the landscape (including buildings) hundreds of
kilometres from the impact site.
A footnote on human-made junk in space.
There are currently millions of bits of debris orbiting the Earth that was produced by human
activity.  This material is often called "space debris", "space junk", "space litter", etc. and some
of it poses a direct risk to orbiting satellites that cross the path of large pieces of space junk.
In 2013 it was reported that there were over 170,000,000 such objects smaller than 1cm were in
orbit above the Earth.  Wikipedia reports that there are about 670,000 pieces of debris that ranges
from 1 to 10 cm in size and about 29,000 are larger than 10cm.
Space debris consists of:
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 frozen bits of nuclear reactor coolant that are leaking from old satellites
 jettisoned spacecraft parts
 nuts and bolts
 solar cells
 abandoned satellites
 paint chips
 nuclear reactor cores
 spent rocket stages
 solid fuel fragments
The following figure shows objects that humans have put into orbit about the Earth that are
currently being "tracked".  95 percent of the objects shown are not satellites, they represent
debris!

 Most of the debris in space is small but it's travelling extremely fast. Below altitudes of
2,000 km, the average relative impact speed is 36,000km/h.
 A 1mm metal chip could do as much damage as a .22-caliber long rifle bullet.  Bits this
size don't generally pose a large threat to spacecraft, but can erode more sensitive
surfaces and disrupt missions.
 A pea-sized ball moving this fast is as dangerous as a 400-lb safe travelling at 100 km/h.
Objects this large may penetrate a spacecraft; this could be fatal.
 A metal sphere the size of a tennis ball is as lethal as 25 sticks of dynamite.  An object
like this will penetrate and seriously damage a spacecraft.
 
Large pieces of human space junk can pose a significant risk when they return to Earth over
populated areas.  In the April of 2018 the world waited nervously for a collision with Earth by an
entire space station the size of a school bus that had been put into orbit by China.  The space
station, Tiangong-1, launched in September of 2011, finally returned to Earth on April 2, 2018,
after a long period of orbital decay that made it difficult to provide much forewarning of
precisely what part of the Earth would be at risk.  Fortunately re-etnry was over the Southern
Pacific Ocean where it reportedly mostly burned up during its descent. 
The following video shows Tiangong-1's re-entry as it burned up while passing through the
Earth's atmosphere.

Quantifying the Risk of Impacts

Grollmann, (original source was [Link]
but this is NO LONGER AVAILABLE) described the types of damages as evaluated by the
insurance industry.  Note that in the following descriptions the period between impacts is, in
some cases, smaller than the scientific data support.
Grollmann divided space objects up by size into four classes of asteroids and described the
nature and magnitude of the various outcomes of impacts for each class.
Type I Asteroid: ranging from 0-30 m in diameter; 10,000 – 50,000/year.
 Normally explodes before impact into dust and small fragments.
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 On March 27, 2003, such an explosion took place and the fragments (the size of tennis
balls) crashed into several houses in Park Forest, Illinois.
 Fragments cause damage but no risk of heat wave, earthquakes, etc., but shock waves can
be locally
significant  (e.g., the  Chelyabinsk  bolide)
The image below shows damage caused by a small meteorite impacting a Subaru Leone 4WD
vehicle.

Like the Earth, the moon is also bombarded by space debris and a NASA program monitor's
lunar impact events constantly.  On March 17, 2013, the most spectacular such event took place
when a 30 to 40 cm diameter meteoroid weighing about 40 kg and travelling at 25 km/sec
collided with the lunar surface releasing energy equivalent to 5 tons of TNT.  Unlike Earth these
relatively small meteoroids impact the lunar surface rather than exploding in the atmosphere
because there is no atmosphere on the moon.  The video, below, shows and discusses the March
17, 2013 lunar impact.

Type II Asteroid: 50 m diameter; every 250 yrs.

 Explodes in the air.
 Over land the heat wave starts fires within several kilometres below the explosion.
 Heat and pressure waves cause extensive damage within 25 or 30 kilometres of
explosion.
 Diminishing damage from pressure wave and winds to almost 100 kilometres.
 Damage can exceed that of a major earthquake.
 10-15 metre tsunamis can cause extensive damage to large coastal cities (e.g., Vancouver,
San Francisco, Tokyo if the Pacific receives the impact).
Type III Asteroid: 1 km diameter; every 100,000 yrs.
 Objects of this size impact the surface; a 1 km object would create a 20 to 30 km
diameter crater.
 Very heavy damage for 500 km around the impact site due to heat and pressure wave.
 A major earthquake would add to extensive damage.
 Forest fires rage across the entire continent due to extensive heat wave and falling hot
debris.
 Local climatic change would have an effect on fauna and flora for decades to come.
 An impact at sea would send masses of water upwards to 10 km.  Tsunamis would make
landfall as waves hundreds of metres high.  Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong,
Miami…..destroyed except for concrete-reinforced ruins.

Type IV Asteroid: 10  km diameter; every 50 million yrs.

 Impact crater: 300 km in diameter.
 Entire continent destroyed.
 Falling masses of molten rock would start forest fires world-wide.
 Magnitude 12 or greater earthquake would just add to the devastation.
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 Auxiliary damage as nuclear power plants are destroyed.

 Global cooling of climate due to dust in the atmosphere would set back both plants and
animals.
 Global food supply jeopardized.
 
How do we assign a level of "risk" to space objects?
We can define "risk" as being the likelihood of some negative outcome arising from an event or
action.
In general the level of risk depends on the frequency of the event causing risk and it's scale (i.e.,
the extent of damage and the number of people affected).
Car accidents occur with a high frequency but they are of very small scale, normally affecting
only a few people per accident.  However, car accidents have a relatively high frequency so that
everyone has a fairly high risk of  being affected by a car accident.
Airplane crashes occur very infrequently but their scale is moderate, possibly affecting up to
hundreds of people.  The risk of an airplane crash is considered to be low because of the very
low frequency.
Asteroid impacts have a very low frequency but potentially have a very large-scale effects (may
affect billions of people) but overall the risk is low to the very low frequency.
However, for the average person the risk of death due to an asteroid impact is only twice
the risk of dying from a "snake, bee or venomous bite or sting" according to an article in
Livescience in 2005 entitled "The Odds of Dying".
The Torino Scale
The Torino Scale is a measure of the risk posed by a given asteroid or comet expressed as a
value from 0 to 10 with each value defined as shown in the following table.
 
The numerical values that are assigned to risk of impact, above, are based on a combination of
the probability that a given object will collide with Earth and the amount of damage that such a
collision will produce.  The diagram below shows how the values of risk in the table relate to the
probability of collision and the damage due to impact.  The "probability of impact" is the
computed likelihood that within the next 100 years the object will collide with Earth given the
known orbit of the object with respect to the Earth's orbit.  The amount of damage caused by an
impact by the object is approximated by the amount of kinetic energy that is released on impact,
expressed in units equivalent to megatons of TNT explosive power (MT).  On the inside of the
Kinetic Energy scale the approximate diameter of an object that would release the amount of
energy indicated is shown in gray letters.

The Formation of Impact Craters

Impact craters form when an object explodes on impact with Earth's surface, releasing its kinetic
energy and displacing crustal material, ejecting it into the atmosphere leaving a large crater on
the surface (1 km diameter asteroid produces a 20 to 30 km diameter crater).  Crater formation
takes place in three stages as described below:
1.  Contact/compression Stage.
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 A very brief stage (fraction of a second) when pressure and temperature increase
suddenly due to the explosive release of kinetic energy on impact.
 Rock in immediate contact is vaporized, surrounding rock melts due to the high
temperatures.
 Rock adjacent to the impact is displaced upwards and other material is ejected.
 Spalled material is derived from the impacting object.
 The crustal rocks beneath the impact site are compressed.

2. Excavation Stage
 This is the stage when material is ejected upwards, away from the impact site.
 Rock beneath the impact continues to be compressed into a short-lived “transient” crater.
 The Chicxulub Crater would have taken less than 2 minutes to complete this stage.
 
3. Modification Stage.
 For craters >4km diameter a peak rises up in the centre as rock that was compressed and
pushed downwards in Stage 2 rebounds and rises upward.
 Central uplift reaches 10% of the crater diameter.
 The rebounding event takes only a few minutes.
 The crater walls slump into the crater.  Initially large slumps occur but these that become
smaller and less frequent over time as the initially steep walls become stable.
Anatomy of a Crater
The following figure shows the characteristics of simple craters (without a central uplift) and
complex craters that have a central uplift and are floored with solidified molten rock. Note that
both craters display a complex array of fractures beneath the crater. Identification of these
fractions is an important indicator that a crater is formed by an impact rather than by other
processes.

So we've found a lot of debris in space, much of it left over from the nebula, that is close by to
Earth and we've been able to determine where the debris will be for hundreds of years into the
future so we know the risk that those objects pose.  The question now is just how much warning
will we have before a significant object collides with Earth.
Here’s an answer from David Morrison of NASA that he gave a few years ago:
 
“With so many of even the larger NEOs remaining undiscovered, the most likely warning today
would be zero -- the first indication of a collision
would be the flash of light and the shaking of the ground as it hit.
 
In contrast, if the current surveys actually discover a NEO on a collision course, we would
expect many decades of warning. Any NEO that is going to hit the Earth will swing near our
planet many times before it hits, and it should be discovered by comprehensive sky searches like
Spaceguard. In almost all cases, we will either have a long lead time or none at all.”
 
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What space object has posed the greatest risk?

2002 NT7?
 A 2 km diameter asteroid with an impact velocity of 28 km/s
 When first discovered it was thought to be in an orbit that would have it collide with
Earth on January 31, 2019
 2002 NT7 was the first space object to be assigned a high risk of impact when it was first
discovered.
 With further observations the projected orbit became more accurate and showed that it
would miss the Earth on the collision date by a large margin.  As a result, it was removed
from the list of threatening objects. 
The figure below shows the a diagram that was published by BBC news at the time of discovery
of 2002 NT7; it predicts a collision but after more observations the orbit of 2002 NT7 was more
accurately predicted and the risk of collision was removed.

Another close call: 2002 MN June 14, 2002

 On June 14, 2002, asteroid 2002 MN passed within the moon’s orbit of the Earth (within
120,000 km of Earth and about 1/3 the distance from the Earth to the moon).
 The asteroid is the size of a football field (50 – 120 m in diameter) and is traveling at
37,000 km/hr
Which Potentially Hazardous Asteroid will come closest?
99942 Apophis 
 When first discovered it was thought that this 325 metre diameter asteroid could possibly
impact with Earth on April 13, 2029.
 As more data became available it was found that it will come very, very close to Earth;
the current estimate is that it will come to within 31,000 km of Earth (close enough to
collide with some of our satellites that are in orbit about the Earth.)
 It will come so close in 2029 that its interaction with Earth's gravity may alter its orbit so
that it may come even closer on Friday, April 13, 2036.
The following is a brief video about Apophis.
 
Collision Avoidance Strategies
Several approaches have been suggested:
 
1.  Land astronauts (including Bruce Willis) on the object, drill into it and plant nuclear bombs.
 The explosions should break the object up into smaller, harmless pieces (or, a gazillion
chunks of asteroid will destroy the Earth rather than a single very large thud).
2.  Detonate nuclear explosives at selected locations in space near the object.
 The blasts will “nudge” the object away from the blasts, sending it off the course for
collision with Earth.
3.  Attach "solar sails" to the object and let solar energy push it out if its collision course.
 Solar sails would use solar winds to push the object into a new, safer orbit.
4.  Attach rockets to the object to send it off on a new orbit that poses no risk to the Earth.
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Released in May of 2015 the video on YouTube that is linked below describes a joint US/EU
mission aimed at evaluating an approach to dealing with threatening asteroids.   Note that it may
also have economic implications because the problem of moving asteroids into orbits that are
more convenient to mining them for earth-bound purposes might benefit from similar
technology.
Asteroid Impact Mission - on YouTube
Here's a YouTube video from 2019 that deals with How Scientists Are Preparing for an
Incoming Asteroid.
Early detection of objects that have a high risk of collision with Earth.
Under current conditions if a large object were discovered within less than a few years before
impact with Earth we likely won't have enough time to mount a successful avoidance strategy.
So, the NEO program is the best protection that we have today.
 disturbance in the Asteroid Belt
A recent close approach
Asteroid 33122 Florence:  a 5km diameter potentially hazardous asteroid, came to within 18
lunar distances from the Earth on September 1, 2017. The photo below (from NASA/JPL Center
for Near-Earth Object Studies) shows that as Florence came closest to the Earth it was
discovered to have two moons orbiting around it, each somewhere between 100 and 300m
diameter.