NASA: 3 asteroids taller than 'Statue of Liberty' will shoot past earth today
Asteroid bombshell: Three asteroids are expected to shoot past the earth today, said NASA Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) tracks all asteroids. One of the asteroids monitored by the American space agency arm is the 2019 RG2, which will hurtle past at around 310,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) — closer than any potential asteroid near-miss for the next three months.
According to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) the incoming asteroid is almost as big as the Chicago Water Tower or Statue to Liberty.
Professor Greg Leonard, an asteroid specialist at the University of Otago, has made the apocalyptic warning of an asteroid smashing into Earth in his new book ‘End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World’.Leonard said “If we do nothing, sooner or later, there’s a 'one hundred per cent chance' that an asteroid will hit Earth.
The approaching asteroid has been identified by CNEOS as 2019 RG2, which is a near-earth object, according to IBT reports.
“Near-Earth objects are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighbourhood,” CNEOS stated.
NASA: 3 asteroids taller than 'Statue of Liberty' will shoot past earth today
“Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter,” the agency added.
The International Business Times reports say asteroid 2019 QZ3 flew by at 6:49 a.m. ET; asteroid 2019 RG2 follows at around 3:13 p.m. ET, and the third, asteroid 2019 QY4, flashes past at 9:10 p.m. ET.
QZ3 asteroid is the biggest of the trio, with a diameter of 220 feet (67 meters). RG2 is the fastest asteroid, will shoot past Earth at 50,000 miles per hour.
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