Where is the charm and beauty of asteroids, and where will they go?

Artist's rendering of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. It left a 124-mile-wide crater on the surface of our planet

Long before science fiction, people were fascinated (and terrified) by the prospect of space rocks falling to Earth, but why?

One obvious explanation is that asteroids have fallen to Earth many times before, sometimes with disastrous consequences (such as the extinction of the dinosaurs). But there is no imminent threat of an asteroid crashing into Earth and causing disaster. While planetary defense experts monitor near-Earth asteroids, the vast majority of space rocks either miss us completely or are small enough to burn up completely as they pass through the atmosphere.

In fact, NASA announced a plan to prevent any asteroids from threatening the Earth. Later that month, NASA launched the DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), which would send a spacecraft to hit an Asteroid's moon to see if it was possible to redirect the target. Neither space rock will orbit close to Earth, but the test was designed to see if such technology could be used to alter the orbit of a threatening asteroid in the future.

However, this is only a contingency plan for a small probability event. But countless novels, books, movies and television shows have focused on such a possible disaster. From "The Day After Tomorrow" to "Doomsday" and the explosive art of "Armageddon," the "asteroids destroy the Earth" formula is outdated. But the enthusiasm for asteroids has never waned, as evidenced by the upcoming Netflix movie "Don't Look Up" and the movie "Moonfall" in theaters.

Don't Look Up premieres on Netflix on December 10. In the film, two young astronauts attempt to warn humanity that a comet is on its way to destroying the Earth. Although it is not a small asteroid," space rock to destroy humanity," is the crux of this sci-fi fixation." With Moonfall, which was released in theaters in February 2022, things have changed. It's about the moon, not an asteroid, that threatens to hit Earth.

But the trend is older than contemporary action movies. Films such as 1958's The Day The Sky Burned and 1968's Gamma 3 are examples of early science fiction portrayals of the asteroid threat. Even before that, science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov devoted a lot of ink to asteroids. In fact, Robert Cormier's early depiction of the asteroid belt dates back to 1985 in his novel Armageddon

Science inspires novels

Astronomer Amy Mainz was a scientific adviser on the film Don't Look Up. She is the principal investigator of NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer Mission (NEOWISE), which studies the characteristics of asteroids and comets. Why are science fiction stories full of asteroid catastrophes? She gives her opinion on why people are so excited about asteroids.

"Asteroids are fascinating objects from a scientific point of view," Mainz told Space.com. They are moving, indicating that we are in an active solar system and our place in the universe.

"The universe is not a static, unchanging place. It's very active, it's happening all the time, and we're one of them, "she added. "So I think in many ways asteroids are kind of reminding us of that."

Mainz says that while not all current films follow this pattern, at least Don't Look Up shows viewers that "the importance of scientific decision making... At its core, the film tells us about the importance of scientific decision-making in our lives.

The evolution of the asteroid Threat novel

Throughout the early 20th century, asteroids gradually appeared in the media as scientists came to understand the reality of the asteroid belt and the space rocks that "live" there. But it wasn't until the 1950s that stories about asteroid disasters became popular.

The genre's birth coincided with a particularly turbulent time in American history. As the Cold War raged after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the threat of nuclear war reached an all-time high. During this period, schoolchildren in the United States often practiced dodging drills, hiding under desks and covering their heads to practice what to do in the event of a nuclear bomb being dropped.

Asteroid impacts pose as immediate and catastrophic a danger to large areas as a nuclear attack, so it is not surprising that the asteroid disaster formula entered popular culture at the time.

Dylan Ross is a critic of science fiction, film and television, and has devoted his life to finding science fiction material in series such as Star Trek. He told Space.com: 'The earliest science fiction stories about asteroids focused more on the planetary disasters they could cause than how they formed, but I think things may have changed after the second world war; People were trying to overcome their fear of asteroids, which could fall out of the sky without warning and cause catastrophic consequences in a moment."

Human nature also plays a role in explaining our fascination with disaster.

"I think there's an original narrative appeal to the idea. The meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs was the earliest villain to life on Earth. But we wouldn't be human without it. I think some of us feel that we should face and defeat the same threats as the dinosaurs to prove that we are worth living here. Maybe we're just symbolically avenging the dinosaurs."

A more immediate reason asteroid catastrophes are so popular, Roth notes, is their use as plot devices.

"It's also a simple and functional design in a science fiction disaster story," Ross said. "It is a threat of destruction, and there is no will or malice behind it. You don't really have to sugarcoat it -- it's just a rock from space, and there's no need to explain it. It has an immediate effect on us, and we don't need all the fancy trappings that would turn some people off sci-fi."

So, as a useful plot device that can coexist with real world fears while also acting on our most basic, innate fears and feelings, will we stop making asteroid disaster movies?

"I don't think we're going to stop telling stories about large asteroid impacts unless we can actually stop it from happening in reality. (or, if it can't stop it, it will), "says Ross. "If defense against asteroids becomes a common reality, it kind of takes away the romance. Then maybe we'd imagine bigger rocks coming at us (Moonfall)."