Arabia weather – Astronomers have discovered a huge asteroid called “planet killer”, indicating its orbit, which may one day put it in the path of hitting the groundalthough it is difficult to say exactly when this might happen.
The asteroid called “2022 AP7” was found among 3 asteroids close to Earth, “hiding” in the inner solar system, which is the region located within the orbits of Earth and Venus, where astronomers have difficulty finding asteroids in this region due to the intense glare of the sun, and with They were able to detect this trio due to favorable conditions during a short period of twilight.
Scientists succeeded in discovering asteroids using the dark energy camera installed on the Victor M Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tolo Inter American Observatory in Chile, as part of a program of the US National Science Foundation.
“Our aurora survey scours the interior of the orbits of Earth and Venus in search of asteroids,” said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Earth and Planetary Laboratory and lead author of the study.
The team says that the asteroid 2022 AP7 is the largest dangerous asteroid discovered since 2014, with a diameter ranging between 1.1 km and 2.3 km, and any asteroid larger than 1 km is considered fatal to planets.
How dangerous is this collision?
Sheppard explained: If such an object collides with the Earth, the effect will be devastating to life as we know it, with the release of dust and pollutants into the atmosphere that will remain for years, and then the surface of the Earth is likely to cool significantly due to the veil of sunlight that does not reach the planet, and it will be an event Mass extinction like it hasn’t been seen on Earth for millions of years.”
However, the paper specifically talked about the possibility of the asteroid “2022 AP7” colliding with Earth, at a time it was not able to determine.
“The asteroid doesn’t have a chance to hit Earth right now,” Sheppard says, noting that at the moment AP7 crosses Earth’s orbit when Earth is far away on the far side of the sun.
He continued: Slowly, and over time, the asteroid will begin to cross the Earth’s orbit near where our planet is. But he said, “This will be centuries in the future and we don’t know the asteroid’s orbit with enough precision to say much about its dangers centuries from now.”
He added that it might be possible to use multiple effects similar to the “Dart” probe to slightly alter the asteroid’s path every time an asteroid threatens to collide with Earth.
You may also be interested in: The Dart probe collides with an asteroid in space, announcing the success of the first Earth defense test