Astronomers have called an asteroid that will come close to Earth today “The Beast”. But don’t panic just yet.
At its closest approach “The Beast” will pass just over three times the distance from the Earth. That sounds a lot but astronomers say it’s a close shave by cosmic standards.
Observers assure us that there is no chance of a collision, but they do say this fly-by illustrates the danger of a meteor strike.
Of course it’s not the first time such a large asteroid has come too close for comfort. Earlier this year a 886 foot asteroid swept past Earth at 7.69 miles per second.
That happened just days after the anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor that injured 1000 when a spectacular fireball burst over Russia.
Speaking about “The Beast”, asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, said: “This one would definitely be catastrophic if it hit the Earth …
“If it hit a city, it would definitely wipe out an entire metropolitan area.”
The explosion would unleash an explosion with a yield of about 2000 megatons.
“You’d end up with a crater about 4.8km (~3 miles) across,” Mr. Boslough said. “An event like that would break windows over 100 kilometres (~62 miles) away.”
The good news is astronomers believe they are keeping tabs on almost all the asteroids that could be potential “civilization-enders” that come anywhere near Earth.
But there are others that are big and so far undiscovered.
It is estimated there are probably more than 1 million near-Earth asteroids at least 98 feet wide and less than 1 percent of them have been discovered.
This article originally appeared on News.com.au.