November 8, 2011
An asteroid larger than an aircraft carrier is projected to rocket past Earth within the orbit of the moon, but scientists assert that there is no threat of it striking the planet, reports
Fox News.
When the
asteroid 2005 YU55 which is about 1,300 feet across makes its closest approach to Earth at 6:28 EST today, it will be traveling at nearly 29,000 mph. The alien object will be about 201,700 miles from the planet which is closer to Earth than the moon. The moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 238,864 miles.
When asteroid 2005 YU55 passes the planet, it will be the closest a big space rock came to Earth since 1976, reports Fox News.
Although the asteroid 2005 YU55 will be close, there is no need to prepare for Armageddon.
"2005 YU55 cannot hit Earth, at least over the interval that we can compute the motion reliably, which extends for several hundred years," research scientist Lance Benner, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a recent NASA video.
How to Survive an Asteroid Strike on Earth
An asteroid strike on Earth would likely bring serious consequences to all life. An asteroid strike 65 million years ago threw so much debris into the air that sunlight was blocked out lowering world-wide temperatures and possibly causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.
An asteroid strike on Earth today would cause serious problems that could result in mass extinction across the world.
In 2028, scientists have predicted that asteroid 1997XF11 will come extremely close but will not strike the planet. If somehow the asteroid's trajectory changed and it did hit Earth, the result would be a mile-wide asteroid traveling at 30,000mph colliding with the planet's surface. Such a hit would cause the same amount of devastation as a 1 million megaton bomb and would likely wipe out most life on Earth, reports
HowStuffWorks.
Even if an asteroid the size of a house hit the Earth, the result would be equivalent to the 20 kiloton nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In comparison the mile-wide asteroid has more than 10 million times the energetic power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
If a mile-wide asteroid struck Earth, everything would be flattened 100-200 miles from ground-zero and extensive damage would stretch as far as 1000 miles, reports HowStuffWorks.
No matter the size of an asteroid striking Earth the results are highly destructive and on the level of nuclear warfare. If a mile-wide asteroid collided with the planet, there might not be much chance for life to survive. Fortunately scientists do not predict an asteroid impact possibility until February 1, 2060 and "it seems very likely that this possibility will be soon ruled out as well as additional positional observations are processed,"
reports NASA in a release.
