‘The Beast’ asteroid is going to sideswipe Earth today

A HUGE asteroid is going to sideswipe Earth today. If it was to make impact, it would leave a crater nearly 5 kilometres across, and shatter windows 100km away. But don’t panic just yet.

Asteroid

ASTRONOMERS have called an asteroid that will come close to Earth today “The Beast”. But don’t panic just yet.

At its closest approach “The Beast” will pass just over three times the distance from the Earth. That sounds a lot but astronomers say it’s a close shave by cosmic standards.

Observers assure us that there is no chance of a collision, but they do say this fly-by illustrates the danger of a meteor strike.

Of course it’s not the first time such a large asteroid has come too close for comfort. Earlier this year a 270 metre asteroid swept past Earth at 12.37km per second.

That happened just days after the anniversary of the Chelyabinsk meteor that injured 1000 when a spectacular fireball burst over Russia.

A meteorite trail is seen above a residential apartment block in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, on February 15, 2013 after a heavy meteor shower rained down today on central Russia

Speaking about “The Beast”, asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, said: “This one would definitely be catastrophic if it hit the Earth ...

“If it hit a city, it would definitely wipe out an entire metropolitan area.”

The explosion would unleash an explosion with a yield of about 2000 megatons.

“You’d end up with a crater about 4.8km across,” Mr Boslough said. “An event like that would break windows over 100 kilometres away.”

The good news is astronomers believe they are keeping tabs on almost all the asteroids that could be potential “civilisation-enders” that come anywhere near Earth.

But there are others that are big and so far undiscovered.

It is estimated there are probably more than 1 million near-Earth asteroids at least 30m wide and less than 1 per cent of them have been discovered.