Astronomers announced on Monday that they have detected an asteroid about 1.5 kilometers long in the vicinity of Earth, which with a lot of bad luck could crash into it in the distant future, causing planetary devastation.
Most asteroids of this size have already been discovered, scientists say, but this one has so far been hiding in the sun’s glare, making it particularly difficult to detect.
This asteroid, named 2022 AP7, “crosses Earth’s path, which makes it a potentially dangerous asteroid,” said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science. However, at the moment it does not threaten to hit us, because it remains “very far” from Earth when it crosses its orbit, he immediately assured.
“A devastating impact on life as we know it”
The threat comes from the fact that, like any asteroid, its trajectory will slowly change due to the gravitational forces exerted on it, in particular by the planets. Therefore, forecasts are difficult in the very long term.
It is the “largest potentially dangerous object for the Earth discovered in the last eight years”, according to a press release from the American NOIRLab, which operates several observatories.
This NEO takes five years to go around the Sun and is now several million kilometers from Earth at its closest point.
So the risk is very hypothetical, but in the event of a collision, an asteroid of this size would have “a devastating impact on life as we know it,” explained Scott Sheppard. The dust thrown into the atmosphere would block the Sun’s light, cooling the planet and causing a mass extinction.
The discovery was made thanks to the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile and its DECam instrument, initially developed to study dark matter. The results were published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal. Two other asteroids have been discovered in this hard-to-see area, including the closest known asteroid to the Sun. They pose no risk to Earth.
To prepare for a bad discovery, NASA carried out a test mission at the end of September: a spacecraft was propelled against a non-hazardous asteroid, showing that it was possible to modify its trajectory.
Source: BFM TV
