Astronomers have discovered three asteroids in the vicinity of our planet, which until now were hidden in the glare of the Sun. At the same time, one of them is the largest potentially dangerous space body for the Earth that has been discovered in the last 8 years. It is nicknamed the killer of the planet because it would cause a mass extinction like it hasn’t happened for millions of years when it collides with Earth.
The asteroid, which was named 2022 AP7, is one of those that we absolutely don’t want to see in the orbit of planet Earth. Its diameter is approximately 1.5 kilometers, which would have fatal consequences for us in the event of a collision. “So far we have found two close-to-Earth asteroids with a diameter of about one kilometer, which is the size at which we call planet-killing asteroids,” he said in an interview with CNN American astronomer Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Institute of Science.
The discovery of the asteroid and the potential risks were described by Sheppard and his team in a study published in late September in the journal The Astronomical Journal. It shows that 2022 AP7 is potentially dangerous to Earth and could actually collide with Earth one day. However, it is difficult for scientists to estimate when this will happen.
They found that the planet’s killer crosses Earth’s orbit, but only when Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun. This pattern, they say, will continue for centuries because an asteroid takes five years to orbit the sun. But over time, its movement along the orbit becomes more aligned with our planet. Sheppard’s team is still unable to accurately determine the asteroid’s orbit, so they can’t even predict how dangerous it might become in the future.
The consolation for us is that for now the killer will stay away from Earth. This is also confirmed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which withdrew AP7 in 2022 list of observed objects, which could potentially hit Earth in the next 100 years. It seems that the killer of the planets does not have to disturb us for a long time.
But in the future it could wipe out most of life on Earth. “An asteroid one kilometer or more in diameter would have devastating consequences. There would be a mass extinction like not seen on Earth in millions of years,” Sheppard said. Not only would the impact itself have reduced life on the planet. For many years, the atmosphere would be filled with dust and other pollutants, which would lead to significant cooling.
Sheppard’s team expects to find many more planet killers in the coming years. He believes there are about a thousand near-Earth objects larger than a kilometer.
The other two asteroids that astronomers discovered and described in the study pose no risk to Earth. Unlike AP7 of 2022, they are in much safer orbits.
In October, NASA succeeded in changing the orbit of a space body for the first time in history:
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