Categories: Asteroids

“Killer” Asteroid will Miss

Additional observations from astronomers have decreased the likelihood to virtually zero that Asteroid 2003 qq47 will strike the Earth in 2014. The asteroid was first discovered on August 24 by the LINEAR observatory and astronomers put its odds at 1 in 909,000 at 2003qq47 hitting the Earth, but the additional observations on Monday night extended those odds to 1 in 2.2 million, which is below the background risk of asteroid strikes on any given year. If the 1.3 km asteroid were to strike the Earth, it would cause immense damage on a continental scale… but it won’t.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

Recent Posts

Insanely Detailed Webb Image of the Horsehead Nebula

Few space images are as iconic as those of the Horsehead Nebula. Its shape makes…

51 mins ago

Binary Stars Form in the Same Nebula But Aren’t Identical. Now We Know Why.

It stands to reason that stars formed from the same cloud of material will have…

2 hours ago

Earth Had a Magnetosphere 3.7 Billion Years Ago

We go about our daily lives sheltered under an invisible magnetic field generated deep inside…

4 hours ago

Astronomers Think They’ve Found Examples of the First Stars in the Universe

When the first stars in the Universe formed, the only material available was primordial hydrogen…

5 hours ago

First Light from Einstein Probe: A Supernova Remnant

On 9 January 2024, the Einstein probe was launched, its mission to study the night…

23 hours ago

Galaxies Evolved Surprisingly Quickly in the Early Universe

Anyone familiar with astronomy will know that galaxies come in a fairly limited range of…

23 hours ago