Asteroid Day is a chance to learn about space and plan for disaster

Asteroid enthusiasts, rejoice! Thursday, June 30 is your day to remind the world that humankind is just one impact with a space rock away from annihilation (or, at the least, a very bad day).

Asteroid Day, started in 2015, brings together scientists, artists and concerned citizens to raise awareness of the hazards of asteroid impacts and build support for solutions that might avert disaster from the skies. Events are planned at museums, science centers and other locations around the world.

The date coincides with the anniversary of the most powerful impact in recorded history, when a roughly 40-meter-wide asteroid crashed near Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908. The run-in flattened about 2,000 square kilometers of forest and released about 185 times the energy of the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima. Estimates vary, but such collisions happen roughly once every several hundred to 1,000 years.