Centaurs as a hazard to civilization

by Bill Napier, David Asher, Mark Bailey and Duncan Steel

Summary: Assessments of the risk posed by near-Earth objects ignore the possibility of a giant comet entering the inner solar system. Bill Napier, David Asher, Mark Bailey and Duncan Steel examine the likelihood and potential consequences of the appearance of such a centaur.

This review paper is published in the 2015 December issue of the Royal Astronomical Society’s magazine Astronomy & Geophysics. A PDF (632 kB) of the paper is available here.