Armageddon aficionados and people in the astronomy world were all eyes on Wednesday's solar system live-streamed feed, as a four CN Tower-sized asteroid hurtled past Earth.
Known as 1998 OR2, the gigantic chunk of space rock approached Earth nearly Wednesday in a relatively close fly-by but posing no threat to life on Earth.
It approached Earth before 6 a.m. ET, and expected to stay relatively close throughout the day.
Visible even to amateur astronomers through a telescope, experts shares that it was never calculated to come any closer than around 6.3 million kilometers to our planet. It is estimated 16 times the distance between Earth and its moon.
In other words, it will never be close to the dinosaur extinction-level catastrophe.
It could have caused cataclysmic impact, if it hit the planet.
But if it would hit Earth, its two-kilometer-wide scale and its estimated speed of 30,578 kilometers or 19,000 miles per hour, roughly 25 times faster than the speed of sound would create massive damage on our planet.
According to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies of NASA, the fly-by was an exceptional opportunity for astronomers to study the said rock.
Earlier this week, researchers at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory shared images of the asteroid. During their scans, curved white lines appeared on it and they jokingly mentioned that the asteroid appeared to have brought its own mask amidst the planet's COVID-19 pandemic.
For over two decades, scientists have this big space rock coming using a robust international system where it spots and tracks asteroids in our neighborhood of space.
Due to its enormous size and relatively close flightpath, some say that it is a potentially hazardous asteroid. But experts disagree as they emphasized that there was never any concern that it might hit us.
Astrophysicist at the Australian National University, Brad Tucker shared that this asteroid poses no danger to Earth and will not hit as it is one catastrophe we won't have.
He also added that the asteroid cannot wipe out all kinds of life on Earth, even if it had been on a collision course with the planet. He emphasized that it is big, however it is smaller than the asteroid that impacted the planet and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
However, the asteroid-tracking system is not as efficient as advertised. Late last year, astronauts spotted an asteroid that can potentially kill an entire city approaching Earth just a few days before it flew past at a closer range than our moon.
According to NASA, in order to cause a mass extinction catastrophe, it needs an asteroid larger than five kilometers and it even needs a space rock larger than one to two kilometers wide to alter the planet's global climate. But those are still small compared to the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, which has an estimated measure of 16 kilometers wide.
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