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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Gigantic asteroid to hurtle past Earth Thursday: NASA PressTV... An asteroid measuring over a kilometer across is about to hurtle past the Earth on Thursday, NASA says. According to NASA’s Near-Earth Object watch, the gigantic lump of rock, which is up to 1.3 kilometers wide and is currently dashing through space at a speed of about 14 kilometers per second, will skim the Earth at a distance of 26.4 lunar distances, about 10 million kilometers from Earth. “The asteroid will approach Earth…on 2015 May 14,” NASA said in a statement. The asteroid 1999 FN53, which is an eighth of the size of Mount Everest and will fly past the Earth with twice the speed of a space rocket at liftoff, was first discovered in 1999. FN53 is the biggest celestial object to have ever come this close to the Earth. Though the asteroid is due to pass safely several million kilometers away from the Earth, a possible slight deviation from its orbit might put it on a headlong impact course with our planet, which may kill as many as a fifth of the Earth’s population. “We are talking about millions of megatons of energy, vastly more than was released in Hiroshima… It would undoubtedly lead to the deaths of around 1.5 billion people, we are looking at a mass extinction of humanity,” said Bill Napier, a professor of astronomy at the University of Buckinghamshire, speaking about a possible collision between the object and the Earth. If the asteroid were to hit the sea, it would throw clouds of halogen gasses into the stratosphere, destroying the ozone layer, he further noted. “This would allow unrestricted sunlight hit the Earth, the sky would heat up becoming strong enough to burn vegetation…It would also put a lot of water into the stratosphere with these effects ultimately leading to a mass extinction.” The next big asteroid predicted by NASA to hurtle past Earth is Icarus, which is a kilometer across and will fly by our planet on June 16 at just 21 lunar distances. In 2013, a 300-meter across asteroid called Apophis flew by Earth at a distance of 14 million kilometers. Lunar distance is an astronomical distance measurement, based on the average distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the moon, which is 384,400 kilometers. RS/MHB/AS Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Thanks... are you are going to sleep sounder tonight knowing that O.o
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