The largest asteroid since 1976 zipped past earth last Tuesday. NASA says a similar occurrence won’t happen again until 2028.
A recent article in The New York Times notes that the asteroid, known as 2005 YU55, headed towards us at 29,000 mph (10+04) and came within 202,000 miles of earth (10+05), which is “…just inside the moon’s orbit.”
The impact of the quarter-mile long asteroid hitting earth, “‘…would carve a crater four miles across and 1,700 feet deep [10+03]. And if it slammed into the ocean, it would trigger 70-foot-high tsunami waves’” (10+01), according to Purdue University professor Jay Melosh.
The article continues, explaining that, “Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago [10+09]. Scientists believe their growth was stunted by Jupiter’s gravitational pull and never had the chance to become full-fledged planets. Pieces of asteroids periodically break off and make fiery plunges through the atmosphere as meteorites.”
To learn more about 2005 YU55, click here.