Will a killer asteroid really 'skim' by Earth tomorrow?

Christopher Pilny for redOrbit.com – @NotRealChainsaw

One of the best things about being friends with nerds–whether they be in science, tech, space or medicine–is the emails we receive out of the blue from them. Like the one we got from Aaron Deter-Wolf a few months ago about some new tattoos found on Ötzi the Ice Man.

That was a nice heads up and it was an even cooler story (Thanks ADW!), so we were thrilled when, yesterday, Vanderbilt astronomer Dr. David Weintraub reached out to us to clarify some asteroid talk he saw going on in the news.

The title of his email was “stupid asteroid article”, and we couldn’t open it fast enough (partially out of fear that we messed something up).

“I’ve been contacted by folks who want to know about the ‘really big’ asteroid that is going to come ‘real close’ to Earth on Thursday [May 14, 2015],” he wrote. “They apparently have been misled by the following article: http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/576300/Asteroid-1999-FN53-Earth-May-14-mass-extinction-NASA.”

Continuing, he offered us this full response, clarifying what exactly is going to happen tomorrow:

Yes, the asteroid identified by NASA as Near-Earth Asteroid 1999 FN53 is a relatively big one, measuring half a kilometer to one-kilometer in diameter. And yes, if 1999 FN93 were to hit the Earth at a collision speed of about 15 kilometers per second, which is this object’s speed relative to Earth, it would make a big hole, a crater probably 10 kilometers across and 10 kilometers deep, which is big enough to vaporize any major city on Earth and melt most of that city’s suburbs.

But no, that’s not going to happen, despite the hysteria drummed up on a few websites around the world this week.

1999 FN53 is one of the bigger asteroids that NASA identifies in its lists of near-Earth asteroids, but at least this time around the closest approach of 1999 FN53 to Earth will be more than 26 times more distant than the Moon. On the scale of the solar system, that’s a close approach, putting this asteroid within 7% of the distance of the Earth to the Sun. But 10 million kilometers gives us plenty of breathing space, for now. The closest approach to Earth of any known asteroid in the coming months will occur in July, when tiny 2015 HM10, an object about the size of a football field, will come as close to the Earth as the Moon.

Meanwhile, NASA is keeping an eye on space rocks for us (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/neo/index.cfm).  And you can help search for asteroids in our solar system, as part of the Catalina Sky Survey (http://www.asteroidzoo.org/), or by working directly with NASA with their new Asteroid Data Hunter App (http://www.topcoder.com/asteroids/).

—–

Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.

redOrbit.com
offers Science, Space, Technology, Health news, videos, images and
reference information. For the latest science news, space news,
technology news, health news visit redOrbit.com frequently. Learn
something new every day.”