Larimer County Genealogical Society

An Asteroid Just Passed Within 180,000 Miles of Earth

Here is an article that is not about any of the “normal” topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, I found it interesting:

Missed it by THAT much

An asteroid the size of a football stadium threaded the needle between Earth and the moon Saturday morning — the second of two astronomical near misses in three days. Near miss, in this case, is a relative term: Saturday’s asteroid, 2024 MK, came within 180,000 miles of Earth. On Thursday, meanwhile, asteroid 2011 UL21 flew within 4 million miles.

But the Saturday passage of 2024 MK — which scientists discovered only two weeks ago — coincides with a sobering reminder of threats from space. Sunday is Asteroid Day, the anniversary of the 1908 explosion of a rock from space above a Russian town — the sort of danger that, astronomers warn, is always lurking as the Earth hurtles through space… In 2013, for instance, an asteroid about 62 feet across that broke apart nearly 20 miles above Siberia released 30 times as much energy as the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima. While most of the impact energy was absorbed by the atmosphere, the detonation triggered a shock wave that blew out windows and injured more than a thousand people.

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/45NyPyY.