Friday, March 29, 2024

Empire State Building-sized asteroids may hit Earth in the 2100s: report

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NASA said earlier this week that an asteroid named Bennu, the size of the Empire State Building in New York, could hit Earth.

However, if someone is reading this information, neither they nor their grandchildren have any reason to worry, because this event will not happen until the 2100s. According to the New York Times, between now and 2300, the probability of the asteroid Bennu hitting the Earth is 1 in 1,750.

Davide Farnocchiaa, the scientist who wrote this study on the risk assessment of the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu with 17 other scientists, told the New York Times that the probability of an impact is still low. “I don’t care about Bennu more than before. The possibility of impact is still very small,” the news agency quoted Fano as saying. The study entitled “Ephemeris and Near-Earth Asteroid Hazard Assessment” (101955) Bennu tracked the asteroid’s trajectory based on OSIRIS-REx data.

How close will Bennu be to us?

By 2135, this asteroid will reach within 125,000 miles of the Earth, which is about half the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

Scientists say that the exact distance is important here, because the gravity of the earth will “eject Bennu” when it passes by. They cited a phenomenon called the “gravitational keyhole”, which can send Bennu into a specific orbit because it can intersect the Earth 50 years from 2135. A video from NASA Goddard shows how close Bennu will be to Earth in September 2135.

Higher probability of destruction

But the eventful autumn may be September 24, 2182, but scientists say that the probability of Bennu hitting the earth is only 0.037%. They also promised that this would not lead to extinction, but the damage could be huge. Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at NASA, said that the size of the crater will be 10 to 20 times the size of the object.

“Therefore, a half-kilometer-sized object will form a crater with a diameter of at least 5 kilometers, and its diameter may be as high as 10 kilometers. But the damage area will be much larger than this, 100 times larger than the crater,” the New York Times quoted Lindsay said.

NASA is also carrying out a project called the “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”, which aims to deflect the asteroid when it collides with the Earth. The space agency will conduct experiments with an asteroid called Didymos in 2022.

OSIRIS-REx’s research on Bennu

The report also emphasized that due to the data tracked by the OSIRIS-REx mission, the trajectory of the asteroid is accurately known. According to NASA, the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has studied Bennu very closely for the past two years. It left Bennu in May this year and is returning to Earth to collect rock and soil samples collected from Bennu’s surface.

OSIRIX-REx chose Bennu because the types of carbon molecules present in asteroids can provide information about “the cornerstone of life on Earth.”


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