We may no longer have to fear unseen Empire State Building-sized space rocks passing within our orbit.
Asteroid hunters have identified 27,500 overlooked near-Earth asteroids using cutting-edge tech that could potentially stave off armageddon in the future.
Instead of stargazing with a traditional telescope, researchers devised a novel algorithm called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR, which peruses old photos of space like a form of interstellar forensics.
Using the method, the scientists were able to pinpoint the tens of thousands of newly identified solar system bodies — more than were discovered by all of the world’s telescopes last year.
Perhaps most significant among them were 100 near-Earth asteroids — those that pass within the orbit of our planet.
A majority of those reside within the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Ed Lu, executive director of the Asteroid Institute which helmed the research along with the University of Washington, told the New York Times that the work represents “a sea change” in how astronomical research can be conducted.
While none of the newly found intergalactic boulders were on a collision course with Earth, the algorithm could help identify potentially hazardous asteroids and other terrors from beyond.
“A comprehensive map of the solar system gives astronomers critical insights both for science and planetary defense,” Matthew Holman, dynamicist and search algorithm expert at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in a 2022 press release.
The traditional method of analyzing celestial entities’ trajectories involves analyzing multiple photos of the same patch of sky taken over time. That allows them to piece together an object’s orbit like a jigsaw puzzle or flip book.
However, THOR works by connecting a tiny dot of light observed in one image with its corresponding dot in a different photograph, deducing that they’re the same object and effectively predicting their flight path.
The National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, or NOIRLab, houses 412,000 images in its digital archives, some of which depict 1.7 billion dots of light, the New York Times reported.
Using Google Cloud, THOR was able to identify all the previously overlooked cosmic bodies within about five weeks.
“The work of the Asteroid Institute is critical because astronomers are reaching the limits of what’s discoverable with current techniques and telescopes,” said THOR co-creator Mario Jurić, a senior data science fellow with the UW eScience Institute.
Scientists hope that THOR can help increase the number of asteroids that space telescopes can locate.
THOR currently can locate 80% of near-Earth asteroids that are 460 feet in diameter or larger — 10 percent shy of the goal outlined in a 2005 mandate passed by Congress.
In February, an asteroid nearly the size of a double-decker bus passed by Earth, coming within 140,000 miles away — closer than the moon.
Despite its incredible capabilities, THOR could perhaps make studying space less glamorous as the focus increasingly shifts from the stars themselves to a computer screen.