Holy sweet, baby Jesus: An asteroid (known as 2023 BU) the size of a delivery truck passed Earth today and was one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.
2023 BU passed the southern tip of South America just before 11:30am AEST, and was at its closest 3,600km away from Earth.
The asteroid was first spotted by an amateur astronomer called Gennady Borisov, from Nauchnyi in Crimea, who discovered 2023 BU on Saturday — according to The Guardian.
The asteroid was between 3.5 metres 8.5 metres across. However NASA’s impact hazard system quickly rules out a strike.
“But despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Davide Farnocchia, the engineer behind the software said.
“In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”
But even if 2023 BU were to strike Earth, most of it would’ve burnt up in the atmosphere.
Interestingly though, asteroids of 2023 BU’s size are actually pretty hard to detect and only 0.4% of the ones potentially for Earth have been detected.
Luckily though, the kind of asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs (12km wide) have pretty much all been detected and have no threat to Earth. Whereas those at 150m or less, are still very much out there and could potentially cause mass casualties.
Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll die out from climate change before we get struck by an asteroid anyway
