Space & Astronomy

Elephant-sized asteroid passes Earth in extraordinary 'near-miss'

By T.K. Randall
January 29, 2023 ·  6 comments

There are a lot of potential impactors out there. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Pablo Carlos Budassi When it comes to disaster scenarios, there are none quite as terrifying as the prospect of a gigantic asteroid hurtling into the Earth, causing untold devastation and wiping out human civilization.

This isn't a scenario limited to the movies either - it has happened multiple times throughout Earth's history, resulting in major extinction events such as the one that killed the dinosaurs.

As things stand, it is not a question of if it will happen again, but when.

Fortunately, though, the asteroid which hurtled towards the Earth last week was most assuredly not one of these extinction-level threats.In addition to being only the size of an elephant, it passed us by at a distance of 2,200 miles.

More worrying, however, was the fact that this particular asteroid had only been detected relatively recently, meaning that if it had been a threat, it would have been too late to do anything about it.

It also passed us very closely - in fact it was the fourth closest asteroid flyby ever recorded.

This means that the threat posed by asteroids is still very real - even a moderately-sized asteroid could cause a lot of damage if it happened to hit us.

Detecting such objects while they are still far out in space, therefore, remains a critically important endeavor.

Source: Sky News | Comments (6)

Tags: Asteroid