ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Recently, there’s been a lot going on with planet Earth. But in a new interview, a Harvard physicist named Avi Loeb said there's a "serious possibility" that an interstellar object that passed through Earth' solar system could be an alien spacecraft… ahead of his new book.
"I would say, given everything we know, I would give a high likelihood that it could have been artificially made," Loeb said in an interview with Salon .
Were you following this:
Joe Biden's Inauguration Day Comes As Several Asteroids Whip By, Like Normal
But what many of the tabloid headlines pointing this cosmic fact out this week neglect to mention is that this is hardly unusual at all.
But does all this space traffic portend some sort of catastrophe ordained by the gods or perhaps foreseen by Nostradamus? I don't know, but I do know that during a similar 48-hour period no less than 14 asteroids made close approaches by Earth.
A view of the stage on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021, ahead of the 59th ... [+] Presidential Inauguration on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
Humans could move to 'floating asteroid belt colony' within 15 years
Asteroid news: NASA analysis shows space rock swung by closer than the orbit of the Moon |
An asteroid known as 2021 BO1 made a surprise appearance in the early hours of the morning. The space rock came so close to Earth that it crossed the orbit of the Moon.
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NASA analysis revealed the asteroid was travelling at a staggering 10.2 kilometres a second, or more than 36,000 kilometres an hour.
NASA said on its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website: “NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Sia Kapur of BBPS shines in asteroid search campaign | Hindustan Times
Sia Kapur, a Class 5 student of Bal Bharati Public School (BBPS), GRH Marg, has discovered three asteroids in the Kalam Centre Asteroid Search Campaign organized by Kalam Centre in New Delhi in association with International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC).
The outreach support was extended by Homi Labs, India's first future learning lab. Only 22 participants were selected from across the globe who were later trained to analyse data and spot potential asteroids close to Earth. At the end of the campaign, young minds made path breaking contributions to NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Programme and discovered 27 preliminary asteroids.
Asteroid Bigger than Empire State to Pass Earth as Donald Trump's Presidency Ends
An enormous asteroid bigger than the Empire State building is set to fly safely past Earth in the final days of the Donald Trump presidency.
The space rock—dubbed 65717 (1993 BX3)—is scheduled to make its closest approach to our planet at 3:49 a.m. ET on January 17—three days before President-elect Joe Biden is supposed to be inaugurated —according to NASA 's Center for Near Earth Studies (CNEOS).
At this moment, the asteroid will come within around 4.4 million miles of our planet, which is equivalent to roughly 18 times the average distance between Earth and the moon, CNEOS data shows.
Additional Details on the Large Feb. 15 Fireball over Russia
New data fill in some gaps in the story of a fireball that entered Earth's atmosphere near Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15.
The fireball was observed not only by video cameras and low-frequency infrasound detectors, but also by U.S. government sensors. Information on the composition of the meteor was also derived from meteorite fragments found in the Chelyabinsk area. With this new data incorporated, the details of the impact have become clearer.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe could make a 2nd stop at infamous asteroid Apophis | Space
Hot on the heels of successfully snagging hunks of space rock in October, the scientists behind NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample-return mission are contemplating sending the spacecraft to study a second asteroid in 2029, this time the infamous Apophis.
If that appointment comes to be, the spacecraft will arrive at Apophis in April 2029, just over a week after the asteroid makes a hair-raisingly close approach to Earth , within about 19,800 miles (31,900 kilometers) of our planet's surface. Scientists are confident that the asteroid won't impact Earth, but Apophis still has quite a reputation for a space rock, and discovering OSIRIS-REx could visit it provided an unexpected opportunity for the mission.
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