IBS
With the size of a mountain, the impacts of a space rock collision would be devastating – not so much due to the clash and because of what would come next.
The hypothesis is small: only 1 in 2,700, or 0,04%. But it’s not zero. If I collide with the Earth asteroid Bennu may do so in September 2182.
“On average, medium -sized asteroids collide with Earth every 100 to 200,000 years,” says the investigator Axel Timmermann. “This means that our first human ancestors may have already undergone some of these events of change of planet, with potential impacts on human evolution and even our own genetic composition. ”
Bennu is 500 meters long and has already been studied by astronomers, which recollect sample to study the space object.
Now a new one published this week in Science Advances performed a simulation, through the Aleph supercomputer From the IBS Center for Climate Physics, what would be an impact of this object with Earth.
“Our simulations, which inject up to 400 million tons of dust in the stratosphere, show marked disturbances in climate, atmospheric chemistry and global photosynthesis ”, they explain LAN DAI E Timmerman, Researchers at the National University of Pusan, South Korea.
“Global average temperatures are expected Down 4 degrees Celsius and that Global precipitation decreases 15% in our simulations. ”
According to, in addition to the drop in temperature and precipitation, its results revealed a Ozone reduction of 32%. And this is one of the most worrying, since the destruction of the ozone layer can destroy the plant life of the earth.
“Abrupt impact winter would provide unfavorable climatic conditions for plant growth, leading to an initial reduction of 20% to 30% of photosynthesis in terrestrial and marine ecosystems,” says the authors who add that “this would probably cause huge disorders in food security global”.
However, the positive point would go to startedwhich would initially suffer from the destruction of much of the ozone layer, would quickly recover and grow in over -existing volumes on Earth, due to the existing ozone layer wear.
