We’ll soon have a close encounter, but not with aliens – with an asteroid which is pretty huge.
It seems that another massive asteroid comes close to our planet. A huge asteroid which is even taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza will dash past our planet this Friday. It will pass at more than 16,200mph, says NASA’s asteroid trackers.
Meet Asteroid 2019 DN
Express.co.uk notes that the asteroid is dubbed by NASA Asteroid 2019 DN and it is headed for a so-called “Earth Close Approach.”
“NASA’s asteroid-tracking systems expect the asteroid to swing by the Earth on Friday, March 8. NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have narrowed this flyby down to 4.19pm GMT (UTC). When this happens, the asteroid will dash through space at hair-raising speeds of 7.27km per second or 16,262mph,” the online publication writes.
In other words, the asteroid i9s racing through space at over 21 times the speed of sound.
As if this were not scary enough, NASA’s scans revealed that the Asteroid DN measures somewhere between 295ft and 656ft (90m and 200m) in diameter.
Bigger than the Pyramid of Giza
“At the upper end of NASA’s estimate, is an asteroid taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Statue of Liberty and Big Ben’s clock tower in London,” Express.co.uk reports.
This means that the asteroid is 20 times longer compared to a Volkswagen Beetle car. Hopefully, these details will not matter this Friday when the asteroid passes without hitting us.
Anyway, it’s interesting to know that this asteroid is what astronomers call NEOs: Near Earth Objects. These can be asteroids and comets (NECs) which have orbital paths that cut into our own Planet’s journey around the Sun.
Another interesting thing has been recently discovered: a team of astronomers has managed to detect a sneaky black hole.
The black hole influenced an interstellar gas cloud, and you can find out more about it in this previous article.
Rada attended the courses in the Faculty of Letters, Romanian-English section, and finished the Faculty of Theatre and Television, Theatrical Journalism section, both within the framework of Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. Up ’til now, she reviewed books, movies, and theatre-plays, enjoying subjects from the cultural niche. Her experience in writing also intersects the IT niche, given the fact that she worked as a content editor for firms that produce software for mobile devices. She is collaborating with online advertising agencies, writing articles for several websites and blogs.