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"A day of darkness and darkness, A day of the densest cloud, spread like soot on the hills. A huge, huge horde – nothing like that has ever happened, and it will never happen again, through the years and ages. Joel 2: 2 (The Israel Bible ™)
(Shutterstock)
Astronomers have discovered a large asteroid on a trajectory that could hit Earth, but they assure us not to worry, because the probability of a catastrophic impact is only one in 7,000.
The 2006 asteroid QV89 is 164 meters in diameter and will make its closest run to Earth on 9 September 2019. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that it will increase to 4.2 million kilometers from the Earth. This quasi-astronomical accident places QV89 in fourth place on the ESA "risk list". This sounds reassuring, but it's the only thing in the top 10 that is likely to affect the Earth this year. According to the ESA Impact Table, the 2006 QV89 has a 0.014% probability of impacting the Earth in September.
Scientists know about the existence of the asteroid since its discovery on August 29, 2006 by the Catalina Sky Survey located near Tuscon, Arizona. It had two close-up approaches in the 1950s, then one in the 1960s, another in the 1970s, and two others in the 1980s. Two closer approaches were observed by QV89 in 2006, in 2003, and in 2006. According to ESA, after this year, another close-up approach is planned for 2032.
For comparison, a 2006 mid-air meteor, QV89, caused an explosion in flight over Chelyabinsk (Russia) in 2013 and injured more than 1,100 people. It was estimated that the meteor had an initial diameter of 17 to 20 meters and a mass of about 10,000 tons.
These close encounters are not rare. In 2006, a meteor hit Norway with a strike force estimated at the equivalent of 100 to 500 tons of TNT, or about 3% of Hiroshima yield. In September 2007, a meteor crashed in southeastern Peru. Many residents became ill, apparently because of the harmful gases released by the impact.
The most serious impact of asteroids in modern history has probably been the same Tunguskat in 1908. The explosion of the eastern Siberian taiga, sparsely populated, destroyed 770 square miles of forest, without causing human casualties. The explosion is usually attributed to the explosion of a meteor because no impact crater has been found. It is believed that the object has disintegrated between 3 and 6 miles above sea level. The first estimates of the energy of the explosion lie between 10 and 15 megatonnes of TNT, about 1,000 times more than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Studies have given different estimates of the size of the meteoroid, in the order of 200 to 620 feet.
NASA is starting to seriously consider the threat of a catastrophic impact as a potential threat to the planet. In April, scientists and civil authorities from around the world gathered at the 6th Global Defense Conference of the International Academy of Astronautics. in College Park, Maryland. Also National strategy and action plan for the preparation of objects near the Earth was published by the White House in June 2018, outlining plans for such an eventuality.
The Global Defense Coordination Office (PCOD) was created in 2016 to detect any potentially dangerous object. Since the creation of the OFSP, at least four major impacts have been reported. Only three impact events have been predicted successfully, usually in just a few hours. Currently, forecasts are mainly based on the cataloging of asteroids, several years before their impact. It works well for large asteroids because they are easily visible from a distance, but is ineffective at predicting smaller objects that can still be quite destructive.
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