news hardware An asteroid dangerous to life on Earth has just been discovered, scientists announce its size
Asteroids cross our beautiful planet very frequently, but fortunately most are too small to pose the slightest problem. However, the asteroid 2022 AP7 deviates from this rule and is big enough to worry NASA!
2022 AP7: “largest potentially hazardous object for Earth discovered in past eight years”
It’s quite a chilling title bestowed on this asteroid, which inher its the sweet name 2022 AP7. Indeed, according to NSF’s US NOIRLab (a federal government-funded research and development center for ground-based nocturnal optical and infrared astronomy), it is largest potentially dangerous object for Earth discovered in the last eight years
It is a NEO, that is, a Solar System asteroid, whose orbit around the Sun puts it a short distance from Earth’s orbit, and therefore from Earth. Although it is now several million kilometers from Earth, it remains a major threat to life as we know it if it were to collide with our planet.
For Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science who spoke to AFP, the asteroid could have devastating effects. We might even expect a mass extinction, caused by dust from the impact being thrown up into the atmosphere and blocking the Sun’s light.
At 1.5 km in size, however, it’s not as big as the one that hit Earth in the Yucatan and ended the Cretaceous period by wiping out most of the dinosaurs.
Hundreds of millions of asteroids in the solar system
Although the risk is never zero, it remains extremely low. Despite the presence of hundreds of millions of asteroids, the vast majority will never pose a real threat to Earth. For now, according to NASA We know of 1,113,527 asteroids in the solar system. If some like Vesta are 530 km, many others do not exceed 10 meters. All asteroids together have a lower mass than our moon.
- You can track asteroids with “Eyes on asteroids” thanks to NASA
NASA remains extremely cautious (and understandably so) and considers an asteroid dangerous if it comes within 45 million kilometers of Earth and is big enough. Under an extremely pessimistic assumption, the collision would not happen in the next 100 years. In addition, current projections suggest that it will disappear from Earth when it crosses its orbit.
To notice this asteroid, it needed the help of the powerful Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile and its DECam instrument, which can study dark matter. While most of the NEOs potentially dangerous to Earth have been spotted, astronomers remain cautious and are still scanning the sky for new celestial objects.
Recently, last September, NASA also conducted a test mission called DART to prove that it was possible to change its trajectory by projecting a ship onto a non-dangerous asteroid. And the result is encouraging, because the data showed that the trajectory could have been changed thanks to this test! Something that will protect us in the future if we need it.