For decades, Hollywood films like Deep Impact and Armageddon have let moviegoers enjoy the terror of fictional earthbound asteroids from the safety of their seats.But on February 15th of this year, residents of Chelyabinsk in central Russia discovered that the threat is as real as it gets.That meteorite wounded more than 1,000 people-a pinprick compared to the one that probably wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago,and far more benign than the meteor that exploded over Siberia in 1908, leveling more than 2,000 square kilometers of forest.Or the meteorite that hit present day Arizona, 50,000 years ago, and made a crater large enough to swallow up the entire city of San Francisco.But those strikes were no flukes.There are an estimated 10,000 known asteroids orbiting our region of the inner solar system.That's just one percent of the million or more asteroids scientists believe to be our near neighbors in the inner Solar System.Recently, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson warned about....asteroids crashing to earth as meteorites or exploding in the atmosphere. That would be bad,he said.He invited a group of concerned astronaut-scientists from the Association of Space Explorers, which included Thomas Jones.So one of these big explosions is capable of causing a global shutdown in agriculture and starving billions of people to death, as well as those who are killed by the actual explosion itself.
几十年来,像是《天地大冲撞》和《绝世天劫》这样的经典好莱坞电影让影迷们在安全的座椅中就享受到小说中世界末日小行星撞击地球的恐怖感。然而今年的2月15日,罗斯中部雅宾斯克的居民发现这种威胁变成了现实。造成超过1000人受伤的这一陨石和6500万年前可能造成恐龙灭绝的那颗相比真是小巫见大巫,而且比1908年在西伯利亚上空爆炸，面积超过2000平方公里森林的更为温和,要是撞击现今亚利桑那州的是50000年前的陨石,火山口足以吞下整个旧金山。但这些撞击侥幸没有成功。据估计我们的太阳系内部区域有10000颗已知的小行星。这只是科学家认为在我们的太阳系内部近邻小行星的百万分之一。最近,在美国自然历史博物馆在纽约,天体物理学家尼尔・格拉西・泰森就发出了这样的警告。小行星作为陨石撞击地球或在大气中爆炸。这对人类而言将是灭顶之灾,他说道。他邀请了一些关心的宇航员及来自太空探险者协会的科学家们,其中包括托马斯・琼斯在内。所以其中的一次大爆炸能引起全球农业瘫痪并且数十亿人因此饿死,而且实际的爆炸本身也能造成人员伤亡。
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