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Excerpt from phys.org
A team of astronomers at Nanjing University has found evidence that Mars likely has more potentially hazardous asteroids in its path than Earth. In their study, posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group investigated the number of potentially hazardous asteroids that are big enough to cause a major impact should they strike Mars and compared them to similar estimates for Earth.
A lot of work is currently being done to try to identify near Earth objects (NEOs)—asteroids or comets—that might be on a collision course with our planet. The hope is that if a large NEO is found that is likely to strike Earth, a means could be found to change its course. In this new effort, the research team looked at the same possible hazard for future humans living on Mars.
In their work, the researchers looked at a subset of NEOs called potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) that are large enough to cause problems if they strike Mars and that appear likely to do so—or to at least approach closely.
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