The Head of Astronomy at the prestigious Ivy-League university, Avi Loeb, told Express.co.uk: “The immediate risk is more self-inflicted wounds. The possibility that the climate would change as a result of human activity. And that if we don’t get our act together we might actually kill ourselves.
“And so we have to be worried about that first, I would think.”
But the race to the destruction of humanity appears to be heating up as NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine warned Earth should be prepared for an asteroid collision.
Speaking at the International Academy of Astronautics’ Planetary Defence Conference on Monday, he said: “I wish I could tell you these events are exceptionally unique … but they’re not.”
“We have to make sure that people understand that this is not about Hollywood, it’s not about movies.
“This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know, right now, to host life and that is the planet Earth.”
Mr Bridenstine used the example of the Chelyabinsk Event in 2013, in which a meteor about 65 feet across entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Russia.
The huge blast it created as it entered injured more than 1500 people, mostly by smashing windows, and damaged over 7000 buildings.
It was the largest object to hit Earth since the Tunguska event of 1908, when an exploding comet or asteroid destroyed 2,000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.
Statistically, meteor events of that size happen once every 60 years, but Mr Bridenstine pointed out there have been three such incidents over the last 100 years.
He added: “We have to use our systems, use our capabilities to ultimately get a lot more data, and we have to do it faster.
“We know for a fact that the dinosaurs did not have a space programme. But we do, and we need to use it.”
Nasa has been directed by the US government to detect and track 90 percent of near-Earth objects 460 feet or larger.
But there are an estimated 25,000 objects in this category, and the agency has only catalogued about one third of them to date.
