The world is going through difficult times, and someone or something out there often reminds us how fragile we truly are in the Universe. An asteroid of only about 2 kilometres in its diameter has the potential of eradicating most of the life forms from Earth, as it already happened about 60 million years ago during the dinosaur era.
An asteroid the size of an average building wouldn’t kill all animals, plants, and humans living on Earth, but it will surely cause some serious damage if it hits. The same applies to the 2020 TY1 asteroid, which measures about 600 feet wide and hurtles towards us at 29,000 miles per hour.
No reason to worry
The new 2020 TY1 asteroid safely passes by our planet today, November 7, at a distance of 3.5 million miles. That means over 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon, so there’s no reason to worry at all. Oddly enough, the asteroid is considered a near Earth object (NEO).
NASA seems to be doing a great job in tracking the orbits of NEO’s. This allows the space agency to detect and track potentially hazardous objects that come within five million miles away from Earth and that measure over 100 feet in width.
It seems like someone or something up there doesn’t like either of the two candidates for the Presidential Election Day from the United States, as the asteroid known as 2018VP1 managed to scare some people. However, it didn’t pose any threat to our planet and flew past it on Election Day.
“Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approx. 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth! It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.” says NASA Asteroid Watch.
For those who are disappointed that there’s no sign of the world ending in 2020, they will have to count on something else for the job. Maybe even a pandemic?
As our second lead editor, Anna C. Mackinno provides guidance on the stories Great Lakes Ledger reporters cover. She has been instrumental in making sure the content on the site is clear and accurate for our readers. If you see a particularly clever title, you can likely thank Anna. Anna received a BA and and MA from Fordham University.