Gigantic Asteroid Traveling Super Fast Will Barely Miss Earth In 2 Weeks

Daily Mail — A gigantic asteroid which is larger than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, will hurtle past our planet in around two weeks time.

The 2002 AJ129 asteroid has been classed a ‘potentially hazardous’ by Nasa and will fly past at speeds of 67,000mph.

This makes it nearly 15 times faster than the world’s quickest manned aircraft – the hypersonic North American X-15, which travelled at 4,520mph.

The asteroid is around 0.7 miles wide – making it longer than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at 0.5 miles high.

It is set to pass by our planet on the 4th February at a distance of around 2,615,128 miles away – which is relatively close in space terms.

So this big rock is hurtling past earth on February 4th. Pretty cool. If you’re anything like me, you are probably wondering: a) what constitutes a ‘big’ asteroid; b) what constitutes ‘close’ to earth; c) does this mean NASA is any closer to finding aliens?

a) Honestly, I did not think a rock a little bigger than the tallest building would be considered a ‘gigantic’ asteroid, but I’m not a scientist. I’m not an astronomer. I’m a blogger. As it turns out, this motherfucker is traveling so fast and has enough mass that, if it hit, it would FUCK. SHIT. UP.

Daily Mail — It is the largest space rock to brush past our planet this year and previous research has found a rock of this size could plunge Earth into a mini-ice age if it hit.

The impact would cause average temperatures around the world to fall by as much as 8°C, according to a 2016 study on the effects of a collision with a 0.6-mile-wide (1km) asteroid.

Scientists warned the ‘very severe global impact’ would last several years, causing the world to become a much darker, colder and drier place.

‘These would not be pleasant times,’ Charles Bardeen, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said during a presentation at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) at the time.

The asteroid is around 0.7 miles (1.1km) wide – making it longer than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (pictured), which stands at 0.5 miles high (0.8km)

In the ‘worst case scenario’, soot would remain in the atmosphere for around 10 years, while dust take six years to settle back on Earth.

b) So it’s going to miss us by about 2.6 million miles. Sounds far, but it’s really not. For comparison, mars is on average 140 million miles away from earth. In October 2017, a house-sized asteroid passed between us and the moon (which is about 240,000 miles away). In September, a huge ass asteroid about 2.7 miles in diameter missed earth by 4.4 million miles (that one’s so massive, it has its own moons).

Point is, it’s not scary close but it’s close. Especially for how big it is. Asteroids come close all the time; asteroids this big do not come close all the time.

c) I really don’t think so.

BONUS) The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs and 75% of all plant and animal life on earth was around 8 miles in diameter and hit 66 million years ago. It hit here.

Here’s a pic of Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona because craters are cool. Just big ass scars on earth from space rocks smoking us at crazy speeds. This thing is about 3,900 feet wide, 560 feet deep and was made around 50,000 years ago. The meteor was just 50 meters wide.

And that was talking science.

PS — Not good.

Currently Nasa would not be able to deflect an asteroid if it were heading for Earth but it could mitigate the impact and take measures that would protect lives and property.