An asteroid attack on Earth may wipe out entire humanity on Earth, eminent physicist Stephen Hawking has warned. Asteroid pose a major threat to any intelligent civilization present in the universe, including humans species.
Hawking made this comment in a video produced by Asteroid Day. The video is a type of a movement that aims to take steps and raise awareness towards the protection of human species.
In the video, Hawking explains how asteroid attack on Earth, or for that matter, on any other inhabitable planet is one of the biggest dangers to all intelligent species inhabiting such planets. There is a high probability that massive, dangerous asteroids may collide with such habitable planets.
The video further stresses the important of taking this threat as serious and urges global leaders, politicians, scientists and the public to think about it seriously. It is believed that solar system and the entire universe is full of huge space rocks that could potentially cause disaster upon collision with Earth.
Some of these asteroids, continuously monitored by team of scientists around the world, are even more than 1 kilometre in diameter. The scientists estimate that more than 90 percent of these space rocks can collide with Earth some day, a scenario that could completely wipe out human civilization.
There are some asteroids as well that have the potential to wipe a country or the entire continent. Hawking believes that there is an urgent need to take efforts to stop these asteroids from impacting Earth or to tackle them.
According to The Sun, there are several ways by which these asteroids could be stopped from impacting Earth. For example, potentially dangerous asteroids can be hit with a projectile to break them up into pieces in the space itself. Using the same strategy, the course of its path can also be changed.
Else, a gravity tractor or a space ship of sought can be used to change the path of the asteroid using its own gravitational pull. However, care needs to be taken that the radioactive fragments of the asteroid do not end up landing on Earth.
