[Omen]

The international community must work together to tackle the threat of asteroids colliding with Earth, a leading UN scientist says.

The Association of Space Explorers (ASE) says missions to intercept asteroids will need global approval.

The UN will meet in February to discuss the issue.

In the ASE report, the group of scientists and former astronauts point to the historical record to highlight the dangers of asteroids; an impact 65 million years ago may have wiped out the dinosaurs, and the Tunguska impact in 1908 produced a 2,000 sq km fire in Siberia, big enough to engulf a city the size of New York.

They say the next major threatening event could occur in less than 20 years. Asteroid Apophis is due to pass close to the Earth and analyses suggest a one in 45,000 chance of a collision.

It's a single event, potentially causing a large number of casualties
Professor Richard Crowther, chair of the UN Working Group on NEOs

An impact by Apophis would generate the equivalent of a 500 megatonne blast, at least 100 times more powerful than the Siberian event.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | World 'must tackle space threat'

[Lacradocious]

I'll take 1 in 45,000 to be good in our favor. It's like having a lottery, and we all have one ticket so I am not worried. Most large objects explode in the atmosphere like the Tunguska Event but the blast still comes down. Another Tunguska event would most likely occur over the ocean. But who knows, nothing surprises me anymore.

It's a pointless effort. All they would be able to do is tell us an impact in imminent causing utter chaos. We have nothing that could remotely change the course of an object so big and moving so fast that it could generate a 500 megaton blast. If one is coming, it's game over.

It is interesting to note that the dates of most known mass extinctions correlate to known impact craters all over the Earth. Most of the craters have been filled in so they really visible but they can detect there structure. And the core samples they drill have tons of "shocked" minerals that closely resemble what happens to quartz grains exposed to thermonuclear weapons.

And what is even more bizarre, these extinction events and their associated impact craters occur in a cyclical pattern that has remained consistent over time. Some Astronomers think that the Solar System is "bobbing" along close to the plane of the galaxy, and when it enters the dense plane, the gravitational pull of the sun pulls comets and rocky material into the solar system. Computer models are consistent with this theory.

A lesser accepted theory is that the sun is actually part of a binary pair like 95% of all other stars. In this scenario, the sun has an undetectible brown dwarf binary and they have an orbital relationship. When the brown dwarf reaches its closest proximity to the Sun, it's gravitational pull disrupts comets out of the Ort cloud and sends them into an Earth crossing orbit with the Sun.

But the timing could all be a total coincidence.