We humans labour under the delusion that we’ll always be safe from extraterrestrial dangers in this little cocoon we call Earth.
But as mass extinction events from the past have shown, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
In reality, a large object from space could come hurtling towards our planet and threaten to destroy anything in its path here.
And believe it or not, that nearly happened last week.
Last Week, an Asteroid Shot Past Earth & Scientists Didn’t Even Know It Was Coming
Last week, a fridge-sized asteroid swooshed past Earth, barely missing it.
It was 3,000 km from Earth as it shot by Antarctica on 24 Oct, while some of us were at home watching Interstellar.
3,000 km sounds like quite a distance, but it was actually the third-closest asteroid to approach the planet.
The crazy thing about this is that scientists had no idea it was coming. Apparently, Asteroid 2021 UA1 – as it’s been dubbed – headed towards Earth from the direction of the sun, which meant it was dimmer and harder to detect.
In fact, no one knew of its existence until four hours after it had passed by Earth at its closest point.
Not Big Enough to Be Dangerous
Fortunately, Asteroid 2021 UA1 wasn’t big enough to be a danger.
With a diameter of just two meters, Earthlings wouldn’t even have noticed the asteroid while they were watching Gravity as the atmosphere would have burned most of it up before it hit the ground.
Thanks, atmosphere.
NASA says that an asteroid has to be at least 140 metres in diameter for it to pose a danger to us.
100m Asteroid Almost Hit Earth in 2019
The last near-miss that actually worried us came in 2019, when a 100m-wide asteroid whizzing at 24 kilometres a second nearly hit Earth.
Called Asteroid 2019 OK, the asteroid passed within 70,000 kilometres of Earth on 25 June at around 11:22pm Singapore time.
That sounds like a long way away but it came closer to us than the moon’s orbit.
The asteroid is estimated to have been between 57 and 130 metres in diameter, making it the largest rock to pass this close to Earth.
Scientists didn’t know about that asteroid either when it sped towards Earth as it came from the direction of the sun as well.
If it actually collided with Earth, the asteroid would have crashed with the force of 30 atomic bombs, which could have devastated a city.
So, that day, while you were watching The Martian on your phone on the bus, you could have been blasted to pieces. But hey, at least you could have said you died doing what you loved.
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