Around 66 million years ago, a gigantic asteroid hit the earth in its complete fury and wiped out dinosaurs, then dominant species of the planet. Since then, many asteroids have entered the atmosphere, but none of those rogue bodies were capable enough to trigger devastation on a global level.
However, Lembit Öpik, the Chairman of Parliament for the space nation Asgardia, believes that the earth will be hit by a rogue space body one day or the other. In a recent interaction with Express.co.uk, Öpik revealed that the chances of earth being hit by a doomsday asteroid is 100 percent.
"It's a matter of life and death. The chance of an impact is 100 percent, you just don't know when. This happens very rarely, but when it happens it's catastrophic and it will wipe out between 70 and 95 percent of all life. That's what seems to have happened before," said Öpik.
During the talk, Öpik added that the primary goal of Asgardia is to protect the earth from catastrophic asteroid hits that may happen in the future. He even made it clear that the space nation is planning to establish a human base in the space soon, and they also want to conceive the first off-world child.
It was in 2016 that team Asgardia launched a satellite to space and proclaimed themselves as the first space nation.
Öpik is not the only expert who believes in the possibility of a doomsday scenario due to asteroid hit in the near future. Popular American physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson who is now the head of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York had revealed that the end of the world will most likely happen due to an asteroid hit.
Dr Ian McDonald, a top scientist at the Cardiff University's school of earth and ocean sciences also believes that the earth will be hit by a rogue space rock in the future. McDonald believes that events like catastrophic asteroid hits have happened in the past, and it will continue in the future too.
