A group of American scientists has warned that a giant asteroid could intersect Earth, adding that the asteroid they recently identified is the largest discovered in more than eight years.
The team revealed the width of the asteroid, dubbed 2022 AP7, to be 1.5 km, adding that its potential impact will be felt across multiple continents.
“So far, we’ve found two large near-Earth asteroids about 1 kilometer in diameter, the size we call ‘killer planets,'” Scott Sheppard, astronomer at the Earth and Planetary Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science and lead author. of a document describing the discovery, he said in a news release. . But only 2022 AP7 has an orbit that makes it dangerous to Earth, according to scientists.
The “planet killer” asteroid was hidden somewhere between Earth and Venus, making it difficult to detect. Astronomers must look towards the sun to study this region, and the latest orbiting telescopes such as the James Webb or Hubble cannot be used in such studies because the sun’s glare would burn its sensitive optics.
Sheppard explained, “Only about 25 asteroids have so far been discovered that have orbits that completely intersect Earth’s orbit due to the difficulty of observing near the glare of the sun.” In this particular case, scientists made the discovery using the dark energy chamber of the 4-metre Victor M Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo International Observatory in Chile.
And although the inner solar system remains largely uncharted territory when it comes to asteroids, scientists believe this region holds few potential dangers to Earth.
“It’s likely that there are only a few similar-sized near-Earth asteroids left,” Sheppard said, adding that most of them likely have orbits that won’t put them on a collision course with Earth. It is also unclear when, if so, 2022 AP7 could pose a major danger to Earth.
However, according to Space.com, astronomers are already observing as many as 2,200 potentially dangerous asteroids over a kilometer in diameter. And media reports indicate that such space rocks are likely to pose a danger to the entire planet, as even a 50m-wide asteroid can destroy an entire city like London if it explodes above its center.
And there’s an asteroid called “Apovis” that is in dangerously close orbit to Earth. And in 2020, scientists warned it could hit the planet in 2068. Later that same year, the American Astronomical Society’s Planetary Science Division said the 370-meter space rock could enter the orbits of some of our satellites to communications at some point. over time to early 2029.
