Are We Smarter than the Dinosaurs?

Last week, NASA posed an interesting question at SXSW: Are we smarter than the dinosaurs?

The asteroid that caused the extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago was at least five miles wide and hit in the vicinity of the Yucatan Peninsula. The 110 mile crater it created triggered the mass extinction of the dinosaurs when the Earth’s atmospheric temperature changed in an instant. Various models suggest that this extinction was rapid and happened in a matter of hours.

We’re not any more special than the dinosaurs and the same thing could happen to us. With all the information NASA is collecting from outer space, it’s becoming difficult to sift through all the data and pinpoint problems.

NASA has been able to successfully detect 95 percent of near-Earth asteroids since it began looking for them 15 years ago. Although this is a great success rate, any of the other five percent could wipe out the human race — unless we help NASA.

 “Protecting the planet from the threat of asteroid impact means first knowing where they are. By opening up the search for asteroids, we are harnessing the potential of innovators and makers and citizen scientists everywhere to help solve this global challenge.”

— Jenn Gustetic, Prizes and Challenges Program Executive

NASA is offering $35,000 in awards over the next six months to any citizen scientist that helps identify asteroids. The contest challenges participants to develop improved algorithms to identify asteroids in images captured by ground-based telescopes. The winning solution must increase the detection sensitivity, cut the number of false positives, ignore imperfections in the data, and run on all computer systems.

Current asteroid detection initiatives are tracking only one percent of objects that orbit the sun. That means 99 percent of objects need to be identified before they become a serious threat to our planet. If you don’t think this is a serious problem, think again.

Just last month an asteroid the size of three football fields almost hit the earth as it traveled 27,000 miles per hour. Last year, a 40,000 ton asteroid got within 17,200 miles of our planet — flying well below the orbit of our geosynchronous satellites. But perhaps the greatest example of how vulnerable we are to asteroids happened in Chelyabinsk, Russia.

On February 15^th, 2013, a meteor traveling almost 60 times the speed of sound exploded 18 miles above the earth. The blast released the equal energy of 20 atomic bombs and caused wide-spread panic in Chelyabinsk as people believed it was the end of the world. Nobody saw the meteor coming and the impact was a total surprise to NASA. Fortunately, nobody was killed. Will we be as lucky next time?

If you think we’re smarter than the dinosaurs and know a thing or two about code, head on over to the NASA Tournament Lab and become an asteroid hunter. The fate of the world could be in your hands.