NASA Announces Asteroid the Size of an Aircraft to Fly By Earth Today
Earlier this year, Earth experienced the impact of an asteroid, proving that this event was not a fictional creation by Roland Emmerich, but a real occurrence. While it did not possess the destructive power to wipe out entire species like the asteroid that caused the extinction of dinosaurs millions of years ago, it did make contact with the Earth’s surface, causing alarm among nearby residents. According to NASA, on February 15, an asteroid transformed into a fiery ball as it entered the atmosphere and ultimately crashed near McAllen, Texas. Law enforcement agencies in the McAllen area were inundated with calls from concerned citizens who reported hearing a loud explosion. The asteroid, weighing 1000 pounds and measuring 2 feet in diameter, shattered into fragments approximately 21 miles above the Earth’s surface.
In a separate development, NASA has released information about an asteroid expected to fly past Earth today. Feel the details of its close approach.
Asteroid 2022 JF: Details of the close approach
Using its advanced ground and space telescopes, NASA has been monitoring the asteroid, whose orbit brings it very close to Earth today. According to CNEOS (Center for Near-Earth Object Studies), the asteroid, which has been given the name Asteroid 2022 JF, is heading towards Earth and could pass Earth today, November 3rd.
This Earth-like space rock is expected to make its closest approach to the planet at a distance of 5.8 million kilometers and a speed of 61744 kilometers per hour, which is almost as fast as the space shuttle!
According to NASA, it belongs to the Apollo group of Near-Earth Asteroids, which are space rocks passing through the Earth with semimajor axes greater than the Earth’s axis. These asteroids are named after the huge 1862 Apollo asteroid discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.
How big is the asteroid?
In terms of size, Asteroid 2022 JF is nearly 120 feet across, making it almost the size of an airplane! That’s twice the size of the Chelyabinsk asteroid that exploded over the Russian city in 2013, damaging 7,000 buildings and injuring 1,000 people with flying glass shards all around.
What is the Alvarez hypothesis?
The Alvarez hypothesis, proposed by father and son duo Luis and Walter Alvarez in 1980, claims that an asteroid hit Earth more than 65 million years ago and started the extinction of the dinosaurs. Although its impact crater is thought to be in Mexico, new light has now been shed on how it got to Earth. According to English physicist Brian Cox, the asteroid that formed the 140 km long impact crater was thrown off course by Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
“It’s very likely or possible that Jupiter put it on a collision course with Earth,” Cox said, emphasizing that Jupiter is the creator and destroyer of worlds.
