Posted on 06/05/2014 4:26:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A newfound huge asteroid, nicknamed "The Beast," is expected zoom by Earth this weekend, and you can get a sneak preview of the space rock flyby today (June 5).
The asteroid 2014 HQ124, which is the size of a football stadium, poses no chance of hitting Earth in its flyby on Sunday (June 8), and will pass by at a range of three times the distance between the Earth-moon on Sunday (June 8). It was discovered on April 23 by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, a sky-mapping space telescope.
This afternoon, the online Slooh community observatory will host a live webcast preview of asteroid 2014 HQ124, beginning at 2:30 p.m. EDT (11:30 a.m. PDT/1830 GMT) at its website: http://www.slooh.com. You can also watch the asteroid 2014 HQ124 webcast on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh. ..
The mammoth asteroid 2014 HQ124 is about 1,100 feet (352 meters) across, according to scientists with NASA's Asteroid Watch program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. ..
Asteroid 2014 HQ124 will be traveling up to 31,000 mph (14 km/s) — 17 times faster than a shot from a high-speed rifle — when it makes its closest approach to Earth on Sunday at 1:56 a.m. EDT (0556 GMT) at three lunar distances away, ..
Berman said it is "disconcerting" that an asteroid this large flying so close to the planet was only spotted less than two months before its nearest approach to Earth.
"HQ124 is at least 10 times bigger, and possibly 20 times, than the asteroid that injured a thousand people last year in Chelyabinsk, Siberia," Berman said in a statement. "If it were [to] impact us, the energy released would be measured not in kilotons like the atomic bombs that ended World War II, but in H-bomb type megatons."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
One of these days,, splap!!
Believe! ;-)
That does sound like a cause for concern, thinking about the future.
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