Moscow, SANA- A giant asteroid could potentially cross paths with Earth, a group of American scientists have warned, adding that the one they recently discovered is the biggest detected in over eight years. Named 2022 AP7, the celestial body is 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) wide, the team revealed, adding that its potential impact would be felt across multiple continents.
“So far, we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about one kilometer across, a size that we call ‘planet killers’,” Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science and the leading author of a paper describing the discovery, said in a press release. But only 2022 AP7 has an orbit that makes it potentially dangerous for Earth, according to the scientists.
The ‘planet killer’ asteroid was hiding somewhere between Earth and Venus, making it difficult to detect. Astronomers have to look in the Sun’s direction to study this area, and state-of-the-art orbital telescopes like James Webb or Hubble cannot be used in such studies since the Sun’s glare would burn their sensitive optics.
“Only about 25 asteroids with orbits completely within Earth’s orbit have been discovered to date because of the difficulty of observing near the glare of the Sun,” Sheppard explained. In this particular case, the scientists made the discovery using the Dark Energy Camera of the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile
Although the inner solar system still remains largely a terra incognita when it comes to asteroids, the scientists believe that this area contains few potential dangers for Earth.
Source/ RT
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