Asteroid Bennu has been in the news a lot lately. Now it’s making headlines again as there is a chance it may collide with Earth.
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00:00Asteroid Bennu has been in the news a lot lately.
00:06That's because NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission recently brought back and tested samples from
00:10it, where they found most of the building blocks for biological organisms, meaning life
00:14out in the cosmos is much more likely than previously believed.
00:18Now it's making headlines again, all because there is a 0.04% chance it will collide with
00:23Earth in the year 2182.
00:25That's why South Korean researchers have done the math and calculated just how horrific
00:29that impact might be.
00:30The last major asteroid impact on Earth was around 66 million years ago, and was responsible
00:35for altering the trajectory of life on our planet forever.
00:38The asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater was between 6 and 9 miles wide.
00:42Luckily, Bennu is only around a third of a mile wide.
00:45Still, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a catastrophic impact.
00:49According to the simulations run by the Pusan National University researchers, Bennu would
00:53inject up to 400 million tons of dust into the stratosphere, which they say would drop
00:58global temperatures by 4 degrees Celsius and reduce our planet's precipitation by 15%.
01:03In addition, the protective ozone layer around the world would also be drastically affected,
01:07depleted by around 32%, with a 20-30% loss in photosynthesis in all our planet's ecosystems.