A MASSIVE space rock will fly past Earth this week in a nerve-shredding close shave, according to Nasa.
Asteroid 2022 BH7 will make its close approach on Friday and is projected to be as long as the Empire State Building.
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Fortunately, it is on track to soar safely past our planet and does not pose any threat to life on Earth.
Were it to hit, 2022 BH7 would be large enough to destroy an entire continent.
Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has provided a rundown of the space rock on its near-Earth Object (NEO) online database.
The platform keeps track of anything passing within 120million miles of Earth – a relatively close call by the agency’s standards.
Thousands of NEOs are tracked by scientists to monitor whether they’re on a collision course with our planet.
If there’s a small chance they’ll collide with the Earth and cause significant damage in future, they’re labelled “Potentially Hazardous”.
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Asteroid 2022 BH7 was discovered earlier this year and is believed to be between 170 and 380 meters wide.
According to Nasa, the space rock will pass by Earth at a safe distance of 2.3million miles.
That’s nearly six times the gap between Earth and the Moon, so don’t run for the nearest bomb shelter just yet.
Astronomers are currently tracking more than 2,000 NEOs that are larger than 1km – big enough to cause a mass extinction event.
Earth hasn’t seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66million years ago.
However, smaller objects capable of flattening an entire city crash into Earth every so often.
One a few hundred metres across devastated 800 square miles of forest near Tunguska in Siberia on June 30, 1908.
Fortunately, Nasa doesn’t believe any of the NEOs it keeps an eye on are on a collision course with our planet.
That could change in the coming months or years, however, as the space agency constantly revises objects’ predicted trajectories.
“Nasa knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small,” Nasa says.
“In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
Even if they were to hit our planet, the vast majority of asteroids would not wipe out life as we know it.
“Global catastrophes” are only triggered when objects larger than 900 metres smash into Earth, according to Nasa.
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In other news, a British woman has told of her horror after scammers used photos of a “silver fox” politician to trick her out of £80,000.
Norfolk County Council is suing Apple over what it says was misleading information about iPhone sales.
The creators of a chilling new horror game say that the title is so disturbing they’ve been forced to censor it on PlayStation.
And, Apple has announced updates to AirTags following claims that the coin-sized tracking devices are being used to stalk people.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
