Two asteroids larger than the Eiffel Tower will approach on January 6 … without colliding with Earth
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Five asteroids are expected to approach Earth on January 6, according to the Center for Object Studies Near Earth (CNEOS).
Three of the Asteroids are relatively small and would pose less of a threat to the planet if they were headed directly towards it, but it’s not like that. The other two nearby asteroids are larger than the Eiffel Tower.
The larger of the two, the AF4 2008 , it is almost half a kilometer wide (0.3 miles) .
Yes an asteroid with those dimensions will crash into the planet, the resulting impact would be the equivalent of 25 to 50 megatons, the same as the largest nuclear bombs that exist today.
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Another risk is speed
While size matters when it comes to determining whether an asteroid poses an imminent threat , its speed can greatly alter the level of risk.
All it would take is a house-sized asteroid traveling to 30, 01 miles per hour to release as much energy as the Hiroshima bomb blast.
This means that although the Asteroid 2020 AJ is the smallest among those who will approach Earth on January 6, is still fast enough I ask how to destroy an entire city if his trajectory would lead him to collide with our planet.
According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) , none of these asteroids, large or small, are a threat . They are being tracked because they are closer to Earth than 19. 5 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, than 238, 855 miles, or because they are larger than 240 feet (about 150 meters ).
The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies ( NASA’s CNEOS) calculates orbits of new asteroid discoveries and performs long-term analysis of possible future positions of dangerous asteroids in relation to Earth to determine and warn of any impact hazard. CNEOS calculates the time and location of the impact in the event of an anticipated impact. All those calculations are public.
