A giant killer asteroid with a "destructive force of 3 billion nuclear bombs" might attack and destroy the Earth, cautions a Chinese astronomer.
Just a fortnight ago, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) predicted that the Earth can be targeted and hit by a major asteroid.
Zhao Haibin, an astronomer with the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China, used its largest telescope to pinpoint that 2009ES, an asteroid about 10 miles wide, would hit the planet. However, astronomers did not point out the exact journey it would take, and when it would hit us.
Haibin said: "With the help of our images, astronomers across the globe have a more accurate moving trajectory of the asteroid."
The 1.2-metre Schmidt telescope camera captured images of 2009ES that would show a better trajectory of the asteroid, he explained. The Chinese Academy of Science noted its current path and assessed that it would journey within 18.8 lunar distances, or the distance from the Earth's center to the Moon's.
Among the 1,640 asteroids taking a path towards the planet, the asteroid has been detected by Scout a new computer system created by NASA. It can locate deadly asteroids and estimate how they hit the Earth.
But to measure the orbits more accurately, it is necessary to conduct further research.
Currently, information of objects in space is entered into the website of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While every 10 minutes the trajectory of new objects are checked, any of those posing a threat are automatically transmitted to the astronomers.
Due to fears that an asteroid would hit the earth in September 2015, NASA had put up an assurance in August 2015 that an asteroid would not hit the Earth for a few hundred years. "There is no scientific basis -- not one shred of evidence -- that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object office said at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Still, if we do get hit, we are indeed doomed, as the Earth is not protected sufficiently. We might be sharing the fate of dinosaurs of 65 million years ago!
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