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publication date:
August 13, 2021 2:25 GMT
Date of update: August 13, 2021 4:30 p.m. GMT
A new scientific study has warned that the asteroid “Bennu” poses a danger to Earth, given the possibility of it colliding with the planet and causing a huge explosion.
The study, recently published in the newspaper “Icarus”, said the collision between Bennu and Earth could produce explosive energy two million times the energy left by the explosion at the Port of Beirut.
And “National Geographic” magazine published a report on the asteroid, in which it said that “for hundreds of millions of years a rubble heap called Bennu circled the sun in relative isolation.”
She added: “Although the asteroid has not represented any direct damage so far on Earth, in hundreds of years, there is a small chance that Bennu will collide with the planet.”
According to the study, scientists used data from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to accurately calculate Bennu’s orbit and its future proximity to our planet.
The researchers analyzed the risk of impact by 2300, and the study concluded that there is a 1 in 1750 chance of a future collision in the next three centuries, a slightly higher probability than previously estimated.
Almost all of the most dangerous encounters with Bennu will occur in the late 21st century and early 21st century, with the only possible impact visible on the afternoon of September 24, 2182. This Tuesday, Bennu will have a 1 in 2 700 chances to hit Earth.
The team, led by David Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, came up with this estimate, determining Bennu’s distance from Earth to be around seven feet dozens of times between 2019 and 2020.
“Bennu is by far the best-known asteroid in the solar system,” says University of Arizona planetologist Dante Loretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator and lead author of the study. “We know where it will be in 100 years. No other body in the solar system is at this level. From the precision of its orbit, on the ground.
For her part, Amy Mainzer, a planetologist at the University of Arizona and an expert on near-Earth asteroids who was not involved in the study, said the team had made a “very precise measurement.”
“If you want to be able to predict where an asteroid is heading in the future, that prediction is entirely determined by how well you can measure where it is today,” she added.
There is a more than 99.9% chance that Bennu will not strike Earth in the next three centuries, and the “Bino” effect will not cause a mass extinction like the “Chekexulub” effect which killed the dinosaurs. 66 million years ago. a kilometer and a half.
However, the collision with Bennu would be devastating, with speculation it would emit more than 1.1 billion tonnes of TNT, nearly two million times the energy of the Beirut port explosion in August 2020.
Since Bennu’s discovery in September 1999, astronomers have carefully followed the asteroid’s orbit using ground-based telescopes, including the iconic Puerto Rican Observatory, and this data has allowed scientists to predict “reasonably.” the future location of the asteroid over the next century. , according to the study.
Bennu is classified as a “potentially dangerous asteroid,” meaning the object is over 460 feet (140 meters) wide and could theoretically be within 4.65 million miles of Earth.
A 2014 study found that there is a 0.037% chance of an asteroid hitting Earth between 2175 and 2199.
But so far, simulations have run into problems after September 2135, and previous predictions have shown Bennu will pass between 75,000 and 330,000 miles from Earth in 2135, and the asteroid could become closer to Earth than the moon.
The study claims that “the asteroid has almost no chance of hitting Earth at this time, but depending on the exact time and place where Bennu is approaching Earth, the gravity of our planet can modify the orbit of the asteroid enough to put it on a future collision course. “
According to “National Geographic”, “Future space missions could help reassess the possibilities of displacement, such as the NEO near-Earth object observation mission, which will be launched by NASA in 2026 with the aim of collecting information on asteroids.”
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