Chances of a new discovery Asteroid The European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday that Valentine’s Day 2046 has fallen on Earth with the potential to wipe out the city.
The asteroid, named 2023 DW and about the size of a 50-meter Olympic swimming pool, was first spotted by a small observatory in Chile on February 26.
It quickly shot upwards NASA And the ESA lists asteroids that threaten Earth, prompting a flurry of headlines, warning some lovers to cancel their Valentine’s plans on February 14, 2046.
Late last month the asteroid was given a one in 847 chance of hitting Earth – but on Sunday that chance rose to one in 432, according to ESA’s risk list. NASA has similar but not identical estimates.
However, that chance dropped to one in 1,584 overnight, Richard Moisel, head of ESA’s planetary defense office, told AFP on Tuesday.
“It will now go down with each observation until it reaches zero in a couple of days at the latest,” he said.
“No one needs to worry about this guy.”
“At this point, nobody should be concerned at all,” Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer, told AFP.
He said it is normal for the odds of a newly discovered asteroid impact to rise briefly before falling sharply.
That’s because the new observations shrink the region of “uncertainty” where the asteroid will approach its closest point to Earth.
While Earth is still within this uncertainty region, the odds temporarily increase — until further observations exclude Earth and the probability drops to zero, as expected with the 2023 DW. Is.
What happens if it hits the ground?
But what will happen in the highly unlikely event that an asteroid hits Earth?
A good comparison was the Tunguska event, in which a similar-sized asteroid is believed to have exploded in the atmosphere over a sparsely populated area in Siberia in 1908, said David Farnuccia, a scientist at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.
“The resulting explosion uprooted trees over an area of about 2,000 square kilometers,” Farnocchia said. London covers an area of about 1600 square kilometers.
An asteroid the size of 2023 DW would cause “regional devastation” and not have a major impact on the rest of the world, Moisal said.
The asteroid, which is orbiting the Sun, came within nine million kilometers of Earth during its most recent closest approach on February 18 – a week before its discovery.
If it were to hit Earth in 2046, it would be traveling at about 15 kilometers (nine miles) per second, according to estimates.
Moisal said there would be about a 70 percent chance of it falling in the Pacific Ocean, but potential strike areas would also include the United States, Australia or Southeast Asia.
Deviation plan
Even if the asteroid is headed our way, experts stress that the world is no longer defenseless against such a threat.
Last year, NASA’s Dart spacecraft intentionally collided with the pyramid-shaped asteroid Dimorphos, significantly knocking it out in the first test of our planetary defenses.
“The DART mission gives us confidence that such a mission against the 2023 DW would be successful if needed,” Farnocchia said.
With 23 years to prepare, there is “plenty of time” to plan such a mission, Moisal said.
He added that ESA’s Hera mission, which is scheduled to launch next year to inspect the damage to DART on Dimorphos, could also be deployed to find it again if needed.
Moisal said such projects would not be considered unless the probability of an impact exceeded one in 100, when it was reviewed by UN-endorsed bodies such as the International Asteroid Warning Network and Space Mission Planning. will receive the attention of the Advisory Group (SMPAG).
Moisal added that SMPAG aims to “put everyone on the same page and avoid what happened in the movie ‘Don’t Love Up,'” in which “stupid things” happened because nations were not in sync with each other. .
However, 2023 DW does not require such a defense mechanism.
“Everyone should just relax, ignore the sensational headlines and stories, and see how this situation plays out,” NASA’s Johnson said, adding that any danger “soon.” “Fever” is likely.
“Nevertheless, the planetary defense community will continue to search!”