We Were Literally THIS CLOSE To Being Wiped Out By An Asteroid This Week
NY POST - A “city-killer” asteroid whizzed by Earth on Thursday, startling astronomers who didn’t pick up the rock’s trajectory until days before it passed the planet, according to a report.
The rock, dubbed Asteroid 2019 OK, passed within 43,500 miles of Earth traveling at a speed of 15 miles a second, the Sydney Morning Herald first reported.
“This is one of the closest approaches to Earth by an asteroid that we know of. And it’s a pretty large one,” Michael Brown, an associate professor at Monash University’s school of physics and astronomy told the paper.
“It’s impressively close. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. It’s a pretty big deal.”
THIS CLOSE!
“It would have hit with over 30 times the energy of the atomic blast at Hiroshima,” Alan Duffy, a Swinburne University astronomy, told the paper.
“It’s a city-killer asteroid. But because it’s so small, it’s incredibly hard to see until right at the last minute.”
Ugh.
Next time.
PS,
Live look at the office of the astronomers whose job is to monitor city-killer asteroids that could crash into Earth and murder us: