In 1908 a space rock exploded over a remote region of Siberia known as Tunguska. The 1908 explosion, more than a thousand times more powerful than atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was thought to have been caused by an object a mere 50 to 100 meters in size. NASA still maintains that the chance of an asteroid or near-Earth object (NEO) impacting the Earth is very slim -- despite conflicting reports from German schoolboys.

A new simulation by a scientist from the Sandia National Laboratory, Mark Boslough, suggests that the space rock in the 1908 explosion may have been much smaller than previously believed. The new simulations illuminate the fact that smaller NEOs could pose a much greater threat than previously believed to the Earth.

Boslough told Seed Magazine, “Chances are we're not going to discover one of these (small NEOs) before it hits. The good news is most of the Earth is either sparsely populated or uninhabited, so the probability a city or populated area will be hit is small. The big ones, 1 kilometer or larger, are the ones we should worry about."

Congressional mandates from the 1990’s were used in 2005 when NASA was tasked to catalog 90% of possibly dangerous NEOs over 140 meters in diameter by 2020. The mandates also tasked NASA with studying ways to deflect hazardous NEOs. To date NASA hasn’t allotted any funds for the project and has not yet begun the task of meeting the congressional dates.

The lack of action on the part of NASA and the U.S. government has left private efforts to fill the gaps in identifying NEOs that could threaten our planet. One example of a private effort is the B612 Foundation that was co-founded by Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart. The B612 Foundation is raising funds to test deflection strategies on a NEO by 2015.

One of the potential best tools for locating and identifying potentially deadly NEOs is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) under construction and expected to come online by 2014. Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi donated a combined $30 million to the LSST to keep it on track for completion in 2014.

Google, in an act of "do no evil," is also a partner in the LSST project.