Talk about a possible apocaplyse has become fashionable, with reports on astronomers closely watching asteroids both big and small on a collision course with our own planet.
In October last year, Time reported that a rogue asteroid is headed our way and could hit us in 18 years -- with a destructive power “50 times greater the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated".
The global news magazine reported that a team of Ukrainian astronomers have discovered a massive asteroid, 2013 TV135, which is on track to hit earth on August 26, 2032.
The discovery, first published by the news agency Ria Novosti, was confirmed by five other astronomy groups in Italy, the UK, Spain and Russia’s Siberian republic of Buryatia, Time reported.
This relatively small asteroid sent a shockwave across a wide swathe of Chelyabinsk, Russia, when it hit on February 15, 2013.
While scientists are unsure if the 1,350 foot-wide rock will actually hit earth, they estimate the explosion would equate to 2,500 megatons of TNT.
That was a few months after an asteroid sent a massive shockwave in February 2013, in Chelyabinsk, Russia. The relatively smaller -- but unexpected -- asteriod knocked out thousands of windows and destroyed parts of buildings, injuring anyone nearby with flying debris.
Impact
The asteriod caught many by surprise. It ripped through the atmosphere at 19km per second and was equivalent to between 500,000 and 600,000 tons of TNT, scientists found.
People directly under the flight of the meteor were knocked off their feet and many others suffered sunburn or eye damage as they looked at the intense fireball.
Dr Ben Rozitis, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tennessee, said that the event triggered a renewed interest in figuring out how to deal with the potential hazard of an asteroid impact.
"Understanding what holds these asteroids together can inform strategies to guard against future impacts," he said.
An estimated 1,500 people were injured when an undetected meteor exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, releasing more than 30 times the explosive energy of the Hiroshima bomb.
Or is it in year 2880?
Another group of researchers studying potentially destructive asteriods said a much bigger asteroid is heading towards earth and could strike our planet on March 16, 2880.
The rock, called 1950 DA, has a diameter of 1,000 metres, and first became infamous in 2002 when astromers predicted it had one in 300 chance of smashing the earth at 38,000 miles per hour on March 16, 2880.
Researchers said 1950 DA is rotating so quickly it “defies gravity” and is held together by cohesive forces, called van der Waals, never before detected on an asteroid.
The odds of a collission was later revised to one in 4,000, but it remained intact on its Earth-bound trajectory, they said.
Studies have revealed that 1950DA once every two hours and six minutes. While the rock should break apart and eventually disintegrate, there are no signs of that happening.
However, scientists say there is no cause for alarm because the hundreds of years of warning -- spanning about 35 generations -- could allow for a method to divert it, such as dusting the surface of the asteroid with chalk or charcoal, or white glass beads.
This would change its reflectivity and allow sunlight to do the work of pushing the asteroid out of the way.
There are about 1,400 potentially hazardous asteroids identified and are being tracked by Nasa which could potential hit the earth and estimating their destructive impact.
