100m Asteroid Almost Hit Earth On 25 Jul 2019 & We Only Knew About It A Few Days Later

Last Thursday, as you drank your bubble tea and said, “Alamak, drink ten cups won’t die one lah,” you actually almost died.

Not from bubble-tea-overdose, but from something from outer space.

An asteroid about 100 metres wide in diameter hurtling at 24 kilometres a second almost hit the Earth.

Called Asteroid 2019 OK, the rock shot past our planet at 11.22 p.m. Singapore time. So while you were in bed watching Salvation on Netflix, an asteroid could have blasted you to pieces.

Hey, at least you could say you died doing what you loved.

Too close for comfort

So…how close were we away from meeting our creators?

Asteroid 2019 OK passed within 70,000 kilometres of Earth.

That sounds like a long way away but it came closer to us than the moon’s orbit.

The asteroid is estimated to be between 57 and 130 metres in diameter, making it the largest rock to pass this close to Earth.

Out of nowhere 

And if you were really watching Netflix’s Salvation, you’d know that brilliant minds with big telescopes should have seen it coming.

So why the news now?

Scientists were not on their extended lunch break. Astronomers had no idea the asteroid was racing towards us because it came from the direction of the sun.

According to Science Alert, asteroids are harder to spot in the daytime and are fainter the further they are from Earth.

Associate Professor Michael Brown, from Monash University’s school of physics and astronomy, said the asteroid’s trajectory coupled with its small size made it “incredibly hard to see until right at the last minute”.

Astronomers in Brazil and the US eventually picked it up a few days before it passed by.

What would have happened if it had hit Earth?

The asteroid would have crashed into the Earth with the force of 30 atomic bombs, says Swinburne University astronomer Associate Professor Alan Duffy.

Even though it’s considered small, it would have devastated a city.

Planetary science researcher Professor Gretchen Benedix said, “Something 100 metres across would leave a noticeable hole on the planet.”

By comparison, the Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded over Russia in 2013, was only about 20 metres in diameter but caused an intense shockwave that collapsed roofs, shattered windows, and injured 1,200 people.

The last time a rock as big as Asteroid 2019 OK struck the Earth it caused an explosion that decimated over 2,000 square kilometres of forest land in Siberia.

So how do we deal with future asteroids?

According to the Washington Post, scientists are working on two different approaches to deflecting potentially harmful asteroids (both are surprisingly mentioned in Salvation):

One involves gently pushing the asteroid off its course slowly over time.

The other utilizes a machine called a gravity tractor, which could divert an asteroid using the gravity of a spacecraft.

However, these techniques have never been attempted and would require decades for building and launching, according to NASA.

So, what can we do?

We can either develop technology that geniuses at NASA haven’t figured out yet or hope to God that the Superman films were actually documentaries.

Or…maybe pray that the asteroid is just an alien ship covered with rock. (oops?)