1706540517
Scientists discovered that an asteroid had entered our atmosphere: the space rock flew towards Berlin at high speed, but exploded before hitting the ground (or the city). It often happens that we are visited by an asteroid, but we often only find out about it at the last moment. This was a few hours in advance.
Article continues after advertisement
The asteroid is called 2024 BXI and was discovered by a man who calls himself an asteroid hunter: Krisztián Sárneczky. He’s not a hobbyist: he’s an astronomer at the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. He managed to do something that we humans have only managed eight times so far: he saw an asteroid arrive in our atmosphere. NASA was able to quickly predict where and when the space rock would crash, and it did it very well.
Small meteorite near Nennhausen
The prediction was: “At half past one in the morning a small meteorite will disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin, near Nennhausen.” The great thing about it is that an image could also be created. A camera in Leipzig shows the asteroid appearing for a few seconds and then disappearing again. It was a small stone: only a meter wide. Some pieces may have been thrown on the ground and are being searched for, but that’s a pretty minor thing.
read more
NASA spacecraft will collide with asteroids
Here is the full video of the asteroid #Sar2736an object about 1 m in size that broke up about 50 m west of #Belin, #Germany, and probably dropped some meteorites to the ground. Video credit: pic.twitter.com/PA73dkqid1
— Denis Vida (@meteordoc) January 21, 2024
Scientias reports that ESA (the European Space Agency) says 99 percent of asteroids smaller than 40 meters that come close to our planet will never be found. The variants found often arrived many years earlier. Because of their small size, they are not easy to spot, and when they are spotted, it often doesn’t take long for them to land. This is dangerous because you can definitely get injured. The likelihood is slim, but in 2013, 1,200 people were injured by a 17-meter-high asteroid over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Broken windows in particular caused problems.
Article continues after advertisement
Asteroids in view
This is also why scientists keep an eye on asteroids and more and more new technologies are being developed to prevent injuries. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile plays a particularly important role in this, but at the same time the aforementioned asteroid hunter Sárneczky has also seen incoming space rocks: Therefore, such initiatives remain important. But there’s no reason to wear a helmet: of the 1 million asteroids we currently know of, only 1,400 are potentially dangerous, says the ESA. And an asteroid that would cause enormous concern for us on Earth is not expected in the next hundred years anyway.
Read more about space travel and subscribe to the Bright newsletter.
read more
NASA shows the asteroid Bennu in the highest resolution ever
#Asteroid #explodes #Berlin #looked