Washington (AFP) – An international team of astronomers announced Monday the discovery of a large asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Earth, raising a slim possibility far into the future for a catastrophic collision.
The 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) wide asteroid, named 2022 AP7, was discovered in a region known to be difficult to spot objects due to glare from the Sun. It was found along with two other near-Earth asteroids using a high-tech instrument at the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile originally developed to study dark matter. “2022 AP7 crosses Earth’s orbit, which makes it a potentially hazardous asteroid, but it does not currently or in the future have an orbit that would cause it to collide with Earth,” said lead author of the findings, astronomer Scott Shepard. the Carnegie Institution for Science. The potential threat comes from the fact that like any object in orbit, its orbit will be slowly modified by myriad gravitational forces, mostly from planets. Therefore, long-term predictions are difficult. The newly discovered asteroid is “the largest potentially Earth-threatening object discovered in the last eight years,” said NOIRLab, a US-funded research group that operates multiple observatories. 2022 AP7 takes five years to circle the Sun under its current orbit, which at its closest point to Earth remains several million kilometers away. The risk is therefore very small, but in the event of a collision, an asteroid of this size “would have a devastating impact on life as we know it,” Shepard said. He explained that the dust thrown into the air would have a significant cooling effect, causing an “extinction event not seen on Earth for millions of years”. His team’s results were published in The Astronomical Journal. The other two asteroids pose no danger to Earth, but one is the closest asteroid ever found to the Sun. About 30,000 asteroids of all sizes — including more than 850 larger than a kilometer across — have been recorded in the vicinity of Earth, giving them the label “Near-Earth Objects” (NEOs). None of them threaten Earth for the next 100 years. According to Sheppard, “there are probably 20 to 50 large NEOs left to be found,” but most are in orbits that put them in the bright light of the Sun. In preparation for a future discovery of a more threatening object, NASA conducted a test mission in late September in which a spacecraft collided with an asteroid, proving that it was possible to change its orbit. © 2022 AFP
title: “New Potentially Dangerous Asteroid Discovered " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-15” author: “Monique Edwards”
An international team of astronomers announced Monday the discovery of a large asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Earth, raising a small possibility of a future catastrophic collision. The 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) wide asteroid, named 2022 AP7, was discovered in a region known to be difficult to spot objects due to glare from the Sun. It was found along with two other near-Earth asteroids using a high-tech instrument at the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile originally developed to study dark matter. “2022 AP7 crosses Earth’s orbit, which makes it a potentially hazardous asteroid, but it does not currently or in the future have an orbit that would cause it to collide with Earth,” said lead author of the findings, astronomer Scott Shepard. the Carnegie Institution for Science. The potential threat comes from the fact that like any object in orbit, its orbit will be slowly modified by myriad gravitational forces, mostly from planets. Therefore, long-term predictions are difficult. The newly discovered asteroid is “the largest potentially Earth-threatening object discovered in the last eight years,” said NOIRLab, a US-funded research group that operates multiple observatories. 2022 AP7 takes five years to circle the Sun under its current orbit, which at its closest point to Earth remains several million kilometers away. The risk is therefore very small, but in the event of a collision, an asteroid of this size “would have a devastating impact on life as we know it,” Shepard said. He explained that the dust thrown into the air would have a significant cooling effect, causing an “extinction event not seen on Earth for millions of years”. His team’s results were published in the journal Science The Astronomical Journal. The other two asteroids pose no danger to Earth, but one is the closest asteroid ever found to the Sun. About 30,000 asteroids of all sizes – including more than 850 larger than a kilometer across – have been recorded in the vicinity of Earth, giving them the label “Near-Earth Objects” (NEOs). None of them threaten Earth for the next 100 years. According to Sheppard, “there are probably 20 to 50 large NEOs left to be found,” but most are in orbits that put them in the bright light of the Sun. In preparation for a future discovery of a more threatening object, NASA conducted a test mission in late September in which a spacecraft collided with an asteroid, proving that it was possible to change its orbit.
© 2022 AFP
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