Our universe is fascinating, with many mysterious objects we don’t understand yet. For example, we made little progress on dark matter and black holes with several years of extensive study. So who really knows what lies beyond our sight? The wonders we can’t even contemplate. How many of you have read about an asteroid passing earth three days ago? The asteroid 7482, one km wide, as big as the size of Burj Khalifa, flew past planet earth on January 18th, 2022. We were fortunate that this did not cause any impact, but Nasa categorized this as a potentially hazardous object.
Destruction is not negative in a way, and our universe proved that life on earth has started with the Big Bang. Since my childhood, I’ve been a huge space fan, and I’m always hooked on reading more and more on this. I really enjoyed writing about the first complete Einstein Ring, and maybe one day, we can spot an Einstein Rosen Bridge and solve the Unified Field Theory that’s been baffling scientists, including the great Albert Einstein.
Today, I would like to share my little knowledge about “Asteroids.” What is an asteroid? Very simple – Asteroid is a large chunk of rock that orbits around planets and suns. For example, Saturn’s rings are made up of asteroids. There are two major asteroid belts in the solar system. One is the belt present between Mars and Jupiter, and the next is the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune. There are also “lone asteroids” that orbit around the solar system at very high speeds and appear once every few years. One example is “The Halley’s Comet,” one of the most famous comets in history. One of the most historical asteroid collisions with the earth is creating “Chicxulub Crater” at the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. This asteroid was a size of 10 km in diameter when it stuck on earth 66 million years ago. This led to mass extinction, wiping off 75% of plant and living species from planet earth, including the famous dinosaurs.
As explained in the beginning, we had 3 asteroids passing earth recently. The first one is described at the beginning of the article. Two more giant asteroids passed on January 20th, 2022, and are about the same size. The names of the 2 asteroids are 2022 AE6 and 2022 AB. These three asteroids are classified as NEO (Near-Earth Object). More asteroids will be passing in the coming days, such as the 2018 PN22. It is very improbable for any of the asteroids to collide with the earth as it is a 1 in 714 chance of collision.
I hope you enjoyed my little write-up on space. See you next week with some insights on Black Holes and Dark Matters.