April 2020, the End of Humanity
By: Aska Makori
Posted on Monday, March 16, 2020
Everyone is going haywire over the Corona Virus pandemic forgetting that the world could be ending in April. I know, it sounds like those false prophesies where guys dig holes on the ground as a safety shelter in case of anything. Well this time, no matter how many tunnels we dig or the number of safety precautions we take, we might all be witnessing an apocalypse.
There is a huge asteroid, that is orbiting the sun in a path that could potentially collide with the earth’s path. The asteroid has been named Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 by astronomers, and is said to be at least 4.1km wide and as big as half of Mount Everest. An object this big could kill millions of people if it ever hits the earth, the impact could be severe enough to end humanity. It is claimed to be approaching the earth at a ridiculous speed of 53,000 miles per hour.
According to Gianluca Masi, an astrophysicist at the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, the asteroid will be visible towards the end of April and will be traced by the 28th day of the month. NASA conciders the asteroid safe though potentially hazardous if ever any cosmic processes influence the asteroid to change its path onto an Earth-bound one.
But what could cause an Asteroid to fall on the earth’s orbit? The force of gravity from other planets could, push space objects from their orbits towards the earth’s orbit; same applies to gravitational pull, in this case, there is a possibility of a future collision.
Another scenario that can cause an asteroid to change its path is the Yarkovsky effect. This is a small but significant force that affects the orbital motion of meteoroids and asteroids smaller than 30-40 kilometers in diameter. It is caused by sunlight; when these bodies heat up in the Sun, they eventually re-radiate the energy away as heat, which in turn creates a tiny push that changes the asteroid’s path.
In another bizarre scenario, asteroids could be hit by other objects in space, break and send their particles towards the earth. This has never been witnessed by scientists before but it’s believed that 65million years ago, there was an asteroid that stack the earth as a result of this.
NASA has said that it is doing more research on future asteroids that are potential threats to the earth and will be able to identify them. It has also made it clear that OR2 will fly past Earth on a trajectory that is officially marked as an “Earth close approach”. This, according to them, could be very far away in human terms; maybe millions or tens of millions of kilometers and humans have no need to worry, they are safe.
With the asteroid approaching, continents such as Africa and Europe will be able to view it without a telescope as they will be in direct exposure to it. It is not expected to return to the earth’s vicinity until April 2023.
