"An asteroid, designated 2005 YU55, will pass Earth at a distance of about 325,000 kilometers, just inside the orbit of the moon. Asteroids come that close frequently, but 2005 YU55 is notable for its dimensions: 400 meters in diameter. NASA says the asteroid is the size of an aircraft carrier, but it's actually even larger."
BUT...before you're all over-come with a thankfully-not-us attack, there's another more serious baby headin' to our neighborhood!
Only this one is a 20 million ton baby that is currently heading towards us at 23,000 miles per hour could collide with our planet in approximately 25 years, Alex Hannaford of the Telegraph wrote on Sunday. The asteroid in question, Apophis, is more than 800 feet wide, comprised of a mixture of rock, ice, and dust, and has been dubbed “the continent killer.”
BUT...before you're all over-come with a thankfully-not-us attack, there's another more serious baby headin' to our neighborhood!
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| No...I don't think it's the Easter bunny Hank. |
“There are two scenarios,” Hannaford writes. “The first, and thankfully most likely, is that Apophis will fly by in April 2029, the year it is due to make its first ‘close approach’, and that’s the last we’ll see or hear of it. The second is that during that approach, it’ll pass through what scientists refer to as a ‘keyhole’ — a small area of space that can alter the asteroid’s course due to Earth’s gravity.”
“If this happens, it’ll be on a massive collision course with us seven years later, likely to be April 13, 2036 — Easter Sunday,” the Telegraph reported added, noting that experts with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California claim that it is “too far away” to predict which of the two possibilities is most likely, but that they should be able to know more in the near future."
Well, that's OK for now then...but don't cancel your continent killer asteroid insurance just yet...and what about that potential collision date; don't it have a certain ring to it, eh?
