Asteroid
2014 YB35 will safely pass Earth at 4.5 million km on the morning of
Friday, March 27. (Composite image by J. Major showing asteroid Lutetia
imaged by ESA’s Rosetta, Earth and Moon imaged by NASA’s Galileo, and
the Milky Way imaged by ESO and Serge Brunier.)
There are ways to report on occasional close approaches by near-Earth
objects (NEOs) that convey the respectful awareness of their presences
and the fact that our planet shares its neighborhood with many other
objects, large and small… and that sometimes their paths around the Sun
bring them unnervingly close to our own.
Then there’s just straight-up over-sensationalism intended to drum up
page views by scaring the heck out of people, regardless of facts.
Apparently this is what’s happened regarding the upcoming close approach by NEO
2014 YB35.
An asteroid of considerable (but definitely not unprecedented) size –
estimated 440-990 meters in diameter, or around a third of a mile across
– YB35 will pass by Earth on Friday, March 27, coming as close as 11.7
times the distance between Earth and the Moon at 06:20 UTC.
11.7 lunar distances. That’s 4.5 million kilometers, or almost 2.8
million miles. Cosmically close, sure, but far from “skimming”…and
certainly with no danger of an impact or any of the nasty effects that
would be a result thereof. None. Zero. Zilch. NASA isn’t concerned, and
you shouldn’t be either.
I typically wouldn’t even bother writing up something like this,
except that I have been seeing posts shared among acquaintances on
Facebook and Twitter that refer to sensationalist articles portraying
the event as a frightening near-miss by an apocalyptic object. I won’t
link to those articles here but in short they focus heavily on the
destructive nature of an object the size of YB35 were it to hit Earth
and how it would wipe out “all species” of life on our planet wholesale,
and how YB35 is “on course” with Earth’s orbit.
Universaltoday
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