A small asteroid hit Earth’s atmosphere just hours after its discovery
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A small asteroid hit Earth’s atmosphere just hours after its discovery

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capture Image of a fireball that exploded over Utah in 2009. On Friday March 11, a similar asteroid exploded over the Arctic Ocean. Astronomers discovered and tracked this asteroid just hours before the impact. (ksl.com)

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SALT LAKE CITY — An asteroid smaller than a GPS satellite but moving at twice the speed made an impact on Earth’s atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean on Friday after being discovered just hours earlier.

This harmless collision marked only the fifth time in history astronomers have seen an object before it collided with Earth.

The asteroid, which is 10 to 13 feet in diameter (or as the Daily Mail calls it, “half the size of a giraffe”), is now officially designated as little planet 2022 EB5 and was first discovered by the Hungarian astronomer K. Sarneczky, who detected tiny specks passing through his telescope.

A few hours later—sometime in the afternoon according to Mountain Standard Time—the object exploded as it entered Iceland’s northern atmosphere in a 2-kiloton explosion. By then, other astronomers had spread the word, observing the rock and precisely tracking its final destination.

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While small asteroids hitting Earth are not uncommon, seeing and tracking objects before impact is rare.

“This happens all the time.” Patrick Wiggins, NASA/JPL solar system ambassador to Utah, said of the asteroid impact. “The thing that makes this different is that we saw it coming.”

Wiggins said impacts of this magnitude occur at least a few times a month, but are mostly invisible over the ocean.

Were it not for the vigilance of a handful of astronomers and scientists, Friday’s collision would have been missed. Italian astronomer Ernesto Guido outlines a timeline of minor planets, from discovery to disintegration, in a posting blog on Saturday.

Sarneczky, who according to Wikipedia has found dozens of similar objects, looking at the asteroid in the 0.6-meter telescope atop a mountain in Hungary. He then put the thing in Near Earth Object Confirmation Page for other observers to confirm his sightings. Astronomer Bill Gray then calculated the object’s trajectory, predicting an impact somewhere southwest of the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen.

But Gray also found that there was no time to waste. He sent a message to his fellow minor planetary observers, warning them of the imminent impact and begging someone in Europe for an apparition.

“I strongly urge European observers to look at this object,” he said. “(The impact) is about forty minutes from ‘now.’”

Shortly after, Gray hit back on his own message, with more observational data from Slovakia and a “mandatory disclaimer” refuting the fear of disaster.

“This thing was probably a meter or two in size … mostly harmless,” he said in a statement message thread titled “Sar2953 = small impactor.”

After the impact, the report went in the observed message thread reported in Iceland, as well as China. Participants in the thread begin to count the numbers, trying to distinguish the details of the collision. One participant demonstrated object tracking similar to GPS satellite tracking, which moves about half as fast.

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Low-frequency observations made in Greenland at the time of the impact revealed not only the size of the explosion left by the object but also its size, Guido wrote in his post.

“From this data, the yield is approximately 2-3 kT TNT. At 15 km/s the diameter is about 3-4 m.” came a report from Greenland.

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Wiggins said this definitely wasn’t as big of an impact Tunguska Impact in Siberiaor even newer The impact of Chelyabinsk in 2013, also over the Russian skies. However, the sightings still teach us a lesson.

“This is a great example of why we need more than two hours’ notice if we want to do something,” Wiggins said.

Contrary to some social media posts, the ambassador said, we didn’t “dodge the bullet.” But if a larger object were on a collision course with our planet, he said we would want “months if not years” to prepare.

However, Wiggins describes Earth’s exposure to small planets as “cosmic photoshoot galleries.” 2022 EB5 is considered as asteroid apollowhich is a class of asteroids whose orbit crosses the Earth’s orbit.

No meteorite shards have been reported to have been found after the 2022 EB5 impact. It is rare for even the predicted meteorites to be found, Wiggins said. The first recorded collision resulted in a small fragment of a meteorite.

Utah is also the target of small asteroids. Some Utah people may remember the night sky that lit up in 2009 when a meteorite falls in the Western Desert. Wiggins remembers sitting in his living room when a fireball exploded in the sky. Although the event was unexpected, the sonic boom heard in Utah allowed it to be tracked, Wiggins said. This meteorite was also the focus of an episode of the show “Male MeteoriteIn 2010.

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