An asteroid capable of wiping out an entire country is heading our way, but there's no need to tick anything off your bucket list just yet.
Asteroid 2014 YB35, spotted last year by astronomers in Arizona, will fly by at a distance of 4.5 million kilometres – nearly 12 times further away than the moon.
But in the vast emptiness of space, that's still a pretty close call.
"Some people say that we are centuries overdue to be hit by such an object," says Matthew Pavletich of the New Zealand Spaceflight Association.
"There have been a couple of near-misses with truck-sized asteroids. In Chelyabinsk in Russia in February 2013, an asteroid broke up there and caused a massive shockwave, broke thousands of windows and caused some injuries – but that was a small object."
YB35 is 500m across, big and strong enough to change life on Earth forever, were it to hit.
"Anything bigger than 100m across is deemed to be like a city-destroyer, in most cases, depending on whether it's made out of silicate-carbon rock or in some cases, asteroids are made out of pure metal, which would be a really bad day if you got struck by one of those," says Mr Pavletich.
"[If an object the size of YB35] were to hit the Earth in the next few hours it would cause major devastation – tsunamis, climate change, that sort thing – that would last for decades."
The good news is in recent years, scientists have been taking the asteroid threat more seriously. Next decade, NASA hopes to catch a small one and put it into orbit around the moon, where it can be studied.
But if YB35 was going to hit Earth, there's not a lot we could do – despite what Bruce Willis might have taught you.
"Science fiction movies make it look easy – unfortunately it would not be easy," says Mr Pavletich.
"Even an asteroid the size of a truck… to move around an object like that you need a lot of power… the technology available to deflect them – unfortunately, that's probably a few generations off."
In January asteroid 2004 BL86 whizzed past three times closer than YB35 will be at its closest. It even had its own moon, but both were a lot smaller than YB35.
3 News
source: newshub archive
