Hawaii, Gatra.com- According to NASA, a recently discovered “potentially dangerous” asteroid, nearly the size of the tallest skyscraper in the world, will crash to Earth in time for Halloween. Live Demikian Science27/10.
Generally speaking, Halloween is symbolized by a scary face shaped pumpkin. The character is called Jack O’Lantern. Jack O’Lantern is a curious spirit who carries a lantern because he managed to induce the devil not to be sent to hell. However, due to his sins, he was not allowed to enter heaven.
The curious ghost asteroid, dubbed 2022 RM4, is estimated to be between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 meters) in diameter, just below the 2,716-foot (828m) tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. It will pass our planet at about 52,500 mph (84,500 km / h), or about 68 times the speed of thunder.
At its closest approach on November 1, the asteroid will arrive approximately 1.43 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Earth, about six times the average distance between Earth and the moon. By cosmic standards, this is a very subtle distance.
NASA marks any space object within 120 million miles (193 million km) of Earth as a “near-Earth object” and classifies any large object within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our own. planet as “potentially dangerous”.
Once flagged, these potential threats are closely followed by astronomers, who scan them with radar to detect signs of deviation from their predicted trajectory that could put them on a devastating collision path with Earth.
NASA tracks the positions and orbits of approximately 28,000 asteroids, showing them with Last warning system for asteroid land impact (Asteroid Impact Final Warning System on Earth / ATLAS) – a series of four telescopes capable of making a total scan of the entire night sky every 24 hours.
ATLAS is an early warning system for asteroid impact developed University of Hawaii and funded by NASA. It consists of four telescopes (Hawaii two, Chile, South Africa), which automatically scan the entire sky multiple times each night for moving objects.
Since ATLAS went online in 2017, it has seen more than 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets. Two of the asteroids detected by ATLAS, 2019 MO and 2018 LA, which actually hit Earth, the first exploded off the southern coast of Puerto Rico and the second landed near the border between Botswana and South Africa. Fortunately, the asteroid was small and did not cause any damage.
NASA has predicted the trajectories of all near-Earth objects by the end of the century. The good news is that Earth faces no known dangers from an apocalyptic asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years, according to NASA.
But that doesn’t mean astronomers think they should stop looking. Although most objects close to Earth may not end civilization, such as the comet that destroys the planet in the satirical film of the disaster of 2021. “Don’t look up” there have been many devastating asteroid impacts in recent history to justify continued vigilance.
For example, in March 2021, a bowling ball-sized meteor exploded over Vermont with a force of 200 kilograms of TNT. In 2013, a meteor exploded in the atmosphere above the city of Chelyabinsk in central Russia produced an explosion roughly equivalent to about 400-500 kilotons of TNT, or 26 to 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb.
During the 2013 explosion, fireballs rained down on the city and its surroundings, damaging buildings, breaking windows and injuring about 1,500 people. If astronomers have ever spied on a dangerous asteroid headed towards us, space agencies around the world have been looking for ways to deflect it.
On September 26, the spaceship Double asteroid redirect test (DART) deflected the harmless asteroid Dimorphos off course, changing the asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes in the first test of planet Earth’s defense system.
China also suggested it was in the early stages of planning an asteroid diversion mission. By ramming 23 Long March 5 rockets into asteroid Bennu, which will oscillate within 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of Earth’s orbit between 2175 and 2199, the country hopes to deflect space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact for our planet.
