Asteroids

Asteroid 2023 BU’s trajectory is in red (WSJ illustration)

An asteroid flew by earth today, missing it by a mere 2,200 miles:

An asteroid the size of a big truck will fly by Earth on Thursday just 2,200 miles above the planet’s surface in one of the closest approaches ever recorded, scientists said.

The asteroid, named 2023 BU, will travel over the Pacific Ocean west of southern Chile, Thursday afternoon Pacific time, according to Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The near-Earth object poses no danger, and there is no expected impact...

Had it entered Earth’s orbit, the asteroid would have burned upon entry and, at its small size, turned into a fireball. “It’s not going to get close enough for that,” said Dr. Farnocchia.

What's alarming to this non-astronomer is that the object was detected on January 21st, less than a week ago.

I hope that larger asteroids that could possibly cross earth's path are being tracked, but experience tells us that we don't know about all of them.

The late Stephen Hawking's principal worry was that an asteroid strike would end life on earth:

“There are thousands of really large asteroids, some are over ten miles long – the size of Manhattan.

“An asteroid this size hits the Earth [every] 100,000,000 years.

“The last one struck the Earth 65,000,000 years ago, and probably was responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs.

“We don’t know when the next asteroid will strike, but if it’s big enough, it could sterilise our planet.

“That would be the end of the five billion year story of life on Earth.”

Sweet dreams!