DON’T Look Up may be a movie but the premise of a potentially deadly asteroid hitting Earth one day in the future isn’t fiction.
Lots of space agencies have their eyes on a few asteroids that could impact Earth one day and we’ve rounded up some of the top contenders.
1
Asteroid Apophis ‘God of Chaos’
Researchers think if Asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian god of chaos, hit Earth then it could kill around 10 million people.
If it strikes it could unleash an explosion the equivalent of 1,200million tons of TNT or about 80,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.
The 1,200 feet wide asteroid is expected to come fairly close to Earth in 2029.
Previously, the ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid was given a one in 150,000 of hitting Earth in less than 50 years.
That’s about a third the odds of being struck by lightning.
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However, Nasa removed the huge space rock from its its Sentry Impact Risk Table last year because scientists think it has almost no chance of hitting Earth in 2068.
A devastating impact from the space rock hasn’t been ruled out completely, it’s just not expected to happen for over 100 years.
Asteroid Bennu
You may have heard of this giant asteroid before as it makes the news a lot.
Nasa discovered Bennu in 1999 and it’s about one third of a mile wide.
That means if it hit Earth it could cause some serious destruction.
There’s no need to panic though as Nasa thinks Bennu has a 1 in 1,750 chance of hitting Earth between now and 2300.
The US space agency even determined a date when it could hit but the odds for that event are even higher.
It suggested Bennu could hit Earth on September 24, 2182.
The odds of that happening are supposedly 1 in 2,700.
Asteroid 2010 RF12
This small asteroid has the greatest known probability of hitting Earth but it wouldn’t do much ‘destroying’.
Nasa has given it a 1 in 22 of hitting Earth in 2095.
The good news is that Asteroid 2010 RF12 is only 23 feet wide.
It’s small size means there’s little danger of much harm arising but it could still cause some destruction.
The asteroid is less than half the size of the 56 feet wide Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded over Russia back in 2013.
Its impact smashed windows and injured more than 1,000 people.
Experts did not predict the impact, sparking concern that Earth could be surprised with a more devastating incident in the future.
Plans to save Earth from asteroids
Some experts are worried that Earth isn’t yet ready to defend itself from potentially deadly asteroids.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once sparked concern by tweeting: “a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defence.”
Nasa is looking into to some defence methods though.
It recently launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission.
Nasa said: “DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.”
The DART craft should slam into a small asteroid called Dimorphos in September with the aim of moving it off course.
Meet the man with an observatory on a Welsh hilltop who tracks thousands of potentially apocalyptic asteroids for Nasa
In other news, Nasa thinks the James Webb Space Telescope will likely be hit by space debris.
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