A COLOSSAL asteroid hurtling through space is feared to be one of the biggest EVER to threaten a collision with Earth.
The gigantic missile thought to measure almost a mile across will brush closer than previous monsters which have sparked a global panic.Worried astronomers warned 1999 FN53, which is an eighth of the size of Mount Everest, will skim the Earth in TWO DAYS.A collision would be nothing short of catastrophic triggering mass destruction, earthquakes and global extinction.
The monster is more than TEN TIMES bigger than other meteorites currently visible on NASA’s Near Earth Object radar.It is also double the size of the gargantuan 2014-YB35 which had astronomers around the world watching the skies in March.Experts warn a collision would trigger an explosion similar to millions of megatons of TNT and would be capable of killing 1.5 billion people.It would be far more destructive than the 1908 Tunguska Event which saw a 50-metre lump of extraterrestrial rock crash into Siberia.It flattened around 80 million trees and sent a shock wave across Russia measuring five on the Richter scale.
The event is held by scientists as a benchmark for the catastrophic consequence of an asteroid impact with earth.
The gigantic lump of rock is travelling faster than 30,000 mph and will brush terrifyingly close to Earth on Thursday.
Bill Napier, professor of astronomy at the University of Buckinghamshire, said an impact would leave unimaginable destruction.He said: “People are concerned about an impact from a very large asteroid, and the impact of something of this scale would be nothing short of global.“It is certainly one of the biggest on the radar, and much bigger than the Tunguska asteroid which was one of the most significant in history.“This is in a completely different ball park, we are talking about millions of megatons of energy, vastly more than was released in Hiroshima.“It would undoubtedly lead to the deaths of around 1.5 billion people, we are looking at a mass extinction of humanity.“To understand the impact of something on this scale, you would have to look to the science fiction writers, it is incomprehensible.”
The asteroid is currently hurtling around the Earth fifty times faster than a jumbo jet and double the speed of a space rocket.Though several million miles away astronomers fear a slight deviation from its orbit will put it on a headlong collision course with the planet.Professor Napier said: “It is a bit like shooting through a key hole. “All being well this one is far enough away not to do us any harm, but people are concerned because you just don’t know.”
If it were to strike the sea it would send a plume of halogen gases into the stratosphere, destroying the ozone layer, he said.He added: “This would allow unrestricted sunlight hit the Earth, the sky would heat up becoming strong enough to burn vegetation.“It would also put a lot of water into the stratosphere with these effects ultimately leading to a mass extinction.”
A giant asteroid safely flew past Earth on Thursday and, despite sensationalist Internet headlines to the contrary, never posed any danger to Earthlings. The asteroid, designated 1999 FN53, got no closer than 6.3 million miles from our planet at its closest point, NASA said. The space agency added that the asteroid, measuring about 3,000 feet (1 kilometer) across, will not get closer than that for well over the next century.
"This is a flyby in the loosest sense of the term," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "We can compute the motion of this asteroid for the next 3,000 years and it will never be a threat to Earth. This is a relatively unremarkable asteroid, and its distant flyby of Earth … is equally unremarkable."
However, the remarkable thing about this is as technology increases so does the detection of Near earth asteroids and the ability to rapidly intercept and redirect planet killer asteroids
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