A MONSTER asteroid is set to come close to Earth in January after Nostradamus made a chilling prediction about a strike. The “potentially hazardous” asteroid is due to make one of its closest-known passes to our planet on January 18 and won’t come this close again for decades. Named 7482 (1994 PC1), the giant rock […]
A MONSTER asteroid is set to come close to Earth in January after Nostradamus made a chilling prediction about a strike.
The “potentially hazardous” asteroid is due to make one of its closest-known passes to our planet on January 18 and won’t come this close again for decades.
Named 7482 (1994 PC1), the giant rock is around two and a half times the height of the Empire State Building but will thankfully shoot past the planet.
It is expected to pass at a distance of 0.013 astronomical units, according to Nasa’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
While this may appear close, the distance translates to around 1.2million miles.
That’s five times further away from us than the moon.
The space debris is classed as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) as it is around 3,280 feet in diameter.
Although branding it potentially hazardous makes it appear dangerous, it does not mean that it will ever necessarily hit Earth.
The designation is simply given to asteroids that pass within a certain distance of the planet and are above a certain size.
A PHA designation is given to an asteroid that can get closer to Earth than 4.6million miles and is larger than 500feet in diameter, according to Newsweek.
It will pass by at an enormous speed of 43,000 miles per hour before going to orbit the sun again.
The asteroid was first discovered in 1994 by R.H. McNaught at the Siding Spring observatory in Australia, according to The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, and generally passes by Earth around every one and a half years.
Yet it won’t come this close again until 2105, Nasa reports.
The news about 1994 PC1 comes after Nostradamus predicted some sort of asteroid would hit the Earth around this time.
It was originally believed that the asteroid collision would take place in 2021.
“Fire do I see that from the sky shall fall,” the astrologer wrote.
The earth did have a near-miss with Asteroid 2021GW4 this year, though it wasn’t considered too much of a threat by NASA, and didn’t exactly fit the astrologer’s dramatic prediction.
In the event that an asteroid did look likely to hit Erath, scientists have begun preparations.
In November, Nasa launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.
It is the first to test technology that could defend the Earth from an incoming asteroid.
On Thursday, the spacecraft, which is designed to crash into an asteroid 11million miles from Earth, sent back its first photo from outer space.
Taken some 2million miles away, the slightly grainy shot was made possible using the DRACO telescopic camera on board.
Scientists have been able to make out about a dozen stars, near where the constellations Perseus, Aries, and Taurus intersect.
But DART isn’t due to reach its final destination until September 2022, so we can expect more photos to come during its long journey.
Should the mission prove successful, it could pave the way for a new planetary defense system that can deflect incoming space rocks before impact.
There are currently 28,000 known near-Eath asteroids that are more than 3,280 ft in size.
None of them are expected to collide with Earth in the near future.
However, one small change to their trajectories could spell disaster for Earth.
Among Nostrodamus’ other predictions from 2022 is the death of Kim Jong-un, war in Europe, and the collapse of EU.
