New Delhi: If your Valentine’s Day looks boring this year, it could be a very different experience 23 years down the road, including a date with an asteroid between 2046 and 2051.
A new asteroid named 2023 DW has a “very small chance” of impacting Earth two decades from now, on February 14, 2046, NASA said. Said Wednesday. After this, there is a possibility of its effect on Valentine’s Day from 2047 to 2051.
The asteroid was discovered last month on February 26 at the San Pedro de Atacama Observatory in Chile. According for the European Space Agency (ESA) and is now ranked at the top of their risk list, a list of space objects that could potentially affect Earth.
It is the only object on NASA’s hazard list that ranks 1 out of 10 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, a metric for categorizing. estimated The danger of an object hitting the earth. All other 1,448 items rank at 0 on the Torino scale.
NASA is currently To keep an eye The asteroid which takes about 271 days to revolve around the Sun is about 49.29 meters in diameter and is currently at a distance of 0.13 astronomical units (AU) or 19447723.2 km from Earth. The astronomical unit (AU) is a unit of length that roughly measures the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
“We are tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW, which has a very small chance of hitting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits. future,” the agency’s asteroid watch tweeted.
We are tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW, which has a very small chance of hitting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to narrow down the uncertainties and make adequate estimates of their orbits in the future. , (1/2) pic.twitter.com/SaLC0AUSdP
– NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) March 7, 2023
The asteroid is currently traveling at a velocity of 24.63 km/s relative to the Sun, coming closest to the Sun at 0.49 AU while the farthest it can go is at 1.15 AU.
In terms of 2023 DW hitting Earth, scientists believe the event is unlikely, with data from ESA currently estimating assessment That asteroid has a 1 in 625 chance while NASA predicts a 1 in 560 chance of impacting Earth.
Astronomer Piero Cicoli, on the other hand, said he believed there was a ‘1 in 400 chance’ that the asteroid would actually make an impact.
“Surely this possibility will soon be ruled out,” he tweeted last week. “However, as an exercise, I calculated where the asteroid might have fallen if this was a possibility.”
#2023dw, With only 3 days of arc, I found about a 1 in 400 chance of an impact on February 14, 2046 (JPL 1/770). Surely this possibility will soon be ruled out, however, as an exercise, I calculated where the asteroid might have fallen if it were a possibility. pic.twitter.com/ldlSYJMvMz
— PS (@Piero_Sicoli) March 2, 2023
The map of their calculations, which are expected to change over time, shows that if 2023 DW does impact Earth, it could fall anywhere between the Indian Ocean to the US east coast.
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