This Illinois Man Hunts Killer Asteroids for NASA
This Illinois man has a job that might save the Earth one day. In his backyard, he hunts killer asteroids for NASA and he's always on alert.
This is Robert Holmes of Westfield, Illinois. He began as a volunteer for NASA back in 2006, but now is a full-time asteroid watcher. With grant money from NASA, he's built 4 telescopes of different magnitudes in his backyard and looks for dangerous space rocks every clear night.
Here's some crazy math for you. In 2016, they say that Robert made 36,000 observations for NASA. That means he was registering nearly 100 observations PER NIGHT. An insane amount of sky work and that number is figuring that he worked every single day.
A documentary mentioned that NASA has tracked down what they believe are 93% of the 1km asteroids that could potentially wreak havoc on the Earth. It's that other 7% that guys like Robert are trying to account for.
According to Wikipedia, a devastating asteroid impact happens once every 500,000 years. If that's correct, we're possibly overdue for one of these rocks big enough to destroy a city making it's way to Earth.
Kudos to Robert Holmes of Westfield, Illinois for being one of the watchmen trying to alert NASA of potential threats to make sure movies like Deep Impact or Armageddon don't become a reality.