Early on January 21, an asteroid explosion over Berlin shocked the world.
While this wasn’t the first time an asteroid had exploded over a city, the fact that the asteroid, dubbed 2024 BXI, had only been discovered hours earlier was most surprising.
First discovered by Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station in Hungary, who is a self-proclaimed asteroid hunter, 2024 BXI is a small asteroid.
Shortly after its discovery by Sárneczky, NASA shared its own report, noting that the object was expected to disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin on the evening of January 20 (via LiveScience).
That appears to be what happened, as cameras in the Northern German city of Leipzig captured an asteroid explosion over Berlin, and the video was shared on X (formerly Twitter) and other social media.
What makes this case so interesting is the fact that the asteroid was only discovered a few hours before it hit Earth.
Of course, if he were bigger, the chances of him being seen earlier would be greater.
However, because of its very small size, BXI 2024 remains hidden until it is very close to Earth.
This isn’t even the first time we’ve seen an asteroid discovered just hours before its explosion in Earth’s atmosphere.
We saw something similar in 2022 when a small asteroid was discovered just two hours before impact. Sárneczky also discovered the asteroid.
Of course, the real worry here is whether a killer asteroid might slip past our defenses and not be seen in the time frame that would allow us to react to it.
Although this is unlikely to happen, this is certainly a concern for some people, because asteroids are known to hide behind the glare of the Sun, making them very difficult to see.
However, this latest asteroid explosion in Berlin is a reminder that not all asteroids headed for Earth are dangerous.
And these kinds of space rocks have been interacting with and impacting our planet for millions of years.
2024-01-24 04:43:00
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