Part of what makes asteroid 2022 AP7 “potentially dangerous” is its brightness, which is indicative of its large size.
If you’ve ever seen the movies Armageddon or Don’t Look Up, you might have contemplated what would happen if a giant asteroid or comet went on a terrifying collision course with Earth.
While big-budget blockbusters tend to dramatize these scenarios, this kind of existential threat could wipe out all life on our planet, if it happens, of course.
An asteroid called 2022 AP7 recently made headlines because it looks pretty big and its orbit could bring it dangerously close to Earth’s path. Scientists classify these types of space rocks as “planet killers.”
But how worried should people be?
According to HR MacMillan Space Center astronomer Marley Leacock, people shouldn’t worry about the attention-grabbing asteroid.
“HR MacMillan as an institution doesn’t really follow the news, and neither do I,” he told Vancouver Is Awesome.
However, the reason the astronomer isn’t concerned has nothing to do with the science behind how asteroids and their impacts work.
“Determining asteroid impacts is not easy. It takes a lot of observation and data collection to figure out the object’s orbital properties. Each time it is seen, more information is gathered, allowing models to be refined and adjusted” , he said. explained
“It is not uncommon for asteroids that previously had a high impact risk to collide with Earth to have that risk drop to zero after additional data collection.”
Part of what makes asteroid 2022 AP7 “potentially dangerous” is its brightness, which is indicative of its large size. The other is its minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) from Earth, which is the smallest distance it will intersect Earth’s orbit, Leacock described.
“If the MOID with respect to Earth is less than 0.05 au [the distance between Earth and the sun] and it has an absolute magnitude of 22.0 or less (that makes it brighter – magnitudes are weird), then it’s potentially dangerous,” he said.
“2022 AP7 has a MOID of 0.0475 au and an absolute magnitude of 17.1”.
What is a planet killer asteroid?
The term “planet-killing” refers to the size of an asteroid, and NASA considers 1 to 2 km to have global effects, Leacock added.
In a paper published Monday (Oct. 31) in The Astronomical Journal, the research team settled on an estimate of 1.5 km for asteroid 2022 AP7. They also classify the giant space rock as the “largest potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) discovered in about eight years.”
While these numbers sound alarming, Leacock says the asteroid currently has no chance of hitting Earth.
“It crosses our orbit, but when it does, we’re on the far side of the sun. Over time that will change and it will start crossing our orbit when we’re closer, but that will happen hundreds of years from now. she said.
“And even then, that number isn’t very precise. We don’t know enough about the asteroid’s orbit. The paper bases the orbit on a 5-year arc of observation, as [the researchers] found the asteroid in data from 2017 after it was detected in January 2022. Much more data is needed to make the models more accurate as we look into the future.”
Locals who want to learn more about the risks associated with asteroids and comets can visit NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). Leacock notes that the government space agency’s impact monitoring system Sentry currently does not have 2022 AP7 in its impact risk data table, which models orbits over the next 100 years looking for possible impacts.
But some space rocks make their way to Earth; they just aren’t the ones with the potential to wipe out life on Earth.
Ruth Hamilton, a resident of Golden, BC, was struck by a meteor through her roof while she was fast asleep in October 2021. Fortunately, she was not injured.