Monday 3 April 2017

Not Quite Death From Asteroid This April

With the exception of the dinosaurs, who doesn't love a headline that screams we are on a collision course with a massive space rock and this year we are being spoilt because there isn't just one barrelling our way but three in short succession.
First up is 0.6 miles wide asteroid '2014 JO25' which has been slapped with the label 'potentially hazardous' and is due to come our way April 19 and is predicted to be the closest an asteroid has come to Earth in 400 years.
Sounds scary but you may want to postpone booking that trip to the International Space Station just yet though because NASA are predicting it will pass by Earth at a safe distance of about 1.1 million miles or about 5 times further than the moon.
Two other big asteroids, '2003 BD44' expected 18 April and '1999 CU3' on April 19, which are both almost 1.2 miles wide, will also pass by our planet shortly, however they won’t come as close as 2014.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was an estimated 6-8 miles wide and NASA predict that it would take an asteroid just 1.5 miles wide to cause widespread devastation on the planet and throw up enough dust to block out the sun and send humans the same
way as the dinosaurs.
Luckily, the Space Agencies keep an eye on all large space rocks and they have not seen anything yet that size with us in it's path so we can relax and just concern ourselves with people with rocks in their heads running things here on Earth instead.

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