Asteroid security

NASA scientist warns Earth is due for 'extinction-level' event

Joseph Nuth, an award-winning scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told attendees during Monday’s annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco that policymakers should start preparing for such a possible cataclysmic strike, despite the extremely long odds of it happening.

“But on the other hand, they are the extinction-level events, things like dinosaur killers, they’re 50 to 60 million years apart, essentially,” Nuth said. “You could say, of course, we’re due, but it’s a random course at that point.”

Making matters even worse is Nuth’s claim that humanity isn’t close to being prepared for such a threat, The Guardian reported.

“The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” Nuth said.