An asteroid collide with the earth on October 8?
Lately, it has become viral on the internet the news that an asteroid will collide with the earth on October 8, 2019 and it will be the end of the world. However, this information is false. Find the reality below:
Asteroid 2007 FT3
The 2007 FT3 asteroid is a celestial body that was recently listed as dangerous due to its 340 meters in diameter and 55 billion kg. If it hit the ground, it would cause an explosion equivalent to 2,700 Trinitrotoluene units. In other words, such an explosion would be 150,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
IReassuring information
But according to NASA and UNAM scientists from the UNAM Institute of Astronomy, its clash with the earth is very unlikely to happen, one in 11 million.
The asteroid will travel near the planet, but at a distance of more than 420 thousand kilometers at its closest point.
To get an idea of this distance, the Moon is 384 thousand kilometers from the Earth. In other words, we don’t need to worry.
There is always an uncertainty in determining an asteroids’s position. And there may be errors when calculating their trajectory. That is why in some cases you cannot rule out 100% of an eventual impact against the Earth, however, it is very remote.
Only meteors of hundreds of meters or a kilometer in diameter can cause damage on a planetary scale, like the one that killed dinosaurs 66 million years ago, but there isn’t one like that coming near us in the next 100 years.
However, this asteroid will continue to be closely monitored by NASA like many others, but in reality it does not represent a significant danger (at this stage).
It’s not the only one
There is another asteroid, which could similarly crash into the planet on September 9, called 2006 QV89. 31 meters in diameter. But its probability of collision is one in 9 million. In the same way, NASA indicated that due to its few meters in diameter, it is not taken as a threat either.
