New Delhi:
News claiming Earth will be hit by a potentially hazardous asteroid QV89 on September 9 this year is adding to the worries of people. A 100-foot-(30-metre)-diameter space rock, dubbed 2006 QV89, was discovered in August 2006. Astronomers predicted it had a 1-in-7,000 chance of crashing into Earth 13 years later in September 2019. As the date has started making its approach the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) used the Very Large Telescope (VLT), a ground-based observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile, to peer through space at the hurtling rock.
After observing asteroid 2006 QV89 astronomers have now ruled out the asteroid's chance of impact with Earth after they were not able to spot it within the area of its predicted collision course. Given the size of the asteroid, VLT would have been able to spot it. Even if the asteroid is smaller than initially believed, it would have been spotted by the telescope, ESO said in the statement.
"Teams obtained very ‘deep’ images of a small area in the sky, where the asteroid would have been located if it were on track to impact Earth in September. Nothing was seen," ESA said in a statement.
Many asteroids have slammed into Earth with massive impacts. Also, the rock that wiped out many species of dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. A global monitoring agency for nuclear weapons has detected 26 asteroid explosions with more power than a nuclear bomb in the 13 years between 2000 and 2013, according to a report.
There are more than seven lakhs asteroids in space that are found by the astronomers. It is to be noted that the asteroids are mainly found in an area called the ‘main belt’, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Recently, we saw many asteroids including 2019 NN3, 2019 MB4, 2019 MT2, 2006 QV89, 2016 NO56M, RF12 and others going past through our planet. However, they all did not hit Earth and we were lucky enough. You may all agree with the fact that asteroid, if hits Earth, can cause massive destruction on the planet.
In 2016, a NASA scientist warned that the Earth is unprepared for such an event. In April 2018, the B612 Foundation reported "It's 100 per cent certain we'll be hit [by a devastating asteroid], but we're not 100 per cent sure when." Also in 2018, physicist Stephen Hawking, in his final book Brief Answers to the Big Questions, considered an asteroid collision to be the biggest threat to the planet.
