(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Don Davis )
A massive space rock is on its way, hurtling toward our planet. It will make its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday.
Huge Asteroid Hurtling Toward Planet Earth
NASA is on high alert as asteroid 2022 TN1 travels toward Earth at incredible speeds. The huge space rock, comparable to a skyscraper in size, is 1,029 feet wide and will make its closest approach on Tuesday (April 30).
The asteroid will pass less than 19 times the distance between Earth and the Moon, or 7, 130, 461 kilometers, from Earth. It will zoom past at the speed of 63,828 kilometers per hour.
NASA, however, assures that the asteroid will have a safe flyby. It poses no risk and will have no impact on us. But such flyby is a stark reminder of the risks lurking in the cosmic neighborhood.
In reality, Earth is struck by an asteroid similar to 2022 TN1 around once every 166,000 years, resulting in significant destruction. The strike would create an impact crater with a diameter of 9.7 kilometers and a depth of 580 meters. The impact crater would melt some 690,000 individuals and discharge as much energy as 12 gigatons of TNT during construction.
In addition, a fireball 15 kilometers in diameter would be created by the impact, killing some 13.5 million people and severely burning an additional 9 million if the asteroid struck Earth over a major city like Delhi. Within 130 kilometers, all the trees would catch fire at once.
The 241-decibel shockwave, which would kill 10 million people and cause all buildings within a 100-kilometer radius to collapse, would be the most catastrophic effect of the impact. The crash would also cause a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that would be felt up to a distance of 240 kilometers.
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One Hazardous Asteroid Identified
Scientists singled out one near-Earth object, Asteroid 7842, as hazardous. The asteroid will spend significant time close to Earth in the next 1000 years.
However, it shows that this rock has the highest chance of crashing with Earth in the next thousand years, although it does not guarantee that it will.
Asteroid 143651, whose orbit is so unpredictable that it has been difficult to predict its precise location for more than a few decades, is another asteroid that the researchers highlighted. Given their current understanding of its position and velocity, astronomers are, therefore, unable to say if it poses any hazard.
The astronomers identified 28 other candidates as having a non-zero possibility of a "deep encounter."
Astronomers have been tracking NEOs, and organizations worldwide are still monitoring the skies. All potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs) are being mapped and cataloged.
Fortunately, the larger rocks are less common and present a bigger risk. Although the census of harmful NEOs is far from complete, they have reliable maps of nearly all potentially deadly asteroids, including those larger than a kilometer.
Studying a kilometer-size NEOs is advantageous since kilometer-scale asteroids seriously harm the global ecology and destroy entire communities.
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