A catastrophic meteorite grazed the Earth at a close distance that no one had discovered

It was not until the last few hours that science discovered. And now everyone has to laugh because of the name given to the meteorite by the scientists.

Hearing the meteorite fall, everyone feels scared. But actually, there are hundreds of meteors each year falling on Earth - of course, micro sizes. Most of them were burned by friction with the atmosphere, the rest landed almost without any significant impact, so . nobody knew.

However, scientists said that just last July 25, there was a giant meteorite that just flew past the Earth . Although it's not equal, Chicxulub once destroyed the dinosaurs, but it was big enough to cause serious consequences if there were collisions. More importantly, it approached Earth at a closer distance than most other dangerous meteorites in history.

Yet only the last few minutes, science discovered.

Scientists gave it a name that made listeners laugh . "2019 OK".

Almost a bit, the meteorite made 2019 become an extremely bad year. And because the Earth is still fine, science gives it a name that makes listeners laugh . "2019 OK".

What makes 2019 OK a "smoking" situation of the Earth lies in its size and distance. Basically, everything that is closer to the distance from the Moon to Earth will be considered "close".

In 2019 we confirmed that 24 meteorites meet this requirement - that is, almost every week an asteroid appears. In June 2019, the meteorite name MO even touched the Earth's atmosphere, creating a giant light trail in the Caribbean sky.

2019 OK is an asteroid longer than 100m. If it collides, it will release more energy than the most powerful atom bomb today, easily wiping out a large city. If it falls into the sea, it will create some giant tsunamis. Meanwhile, for comparison, MO is only about 5m long, and the volume is only about one thousand of 2019 OK.

2019 OK is an asteroid longer than 100m.

The biggest collision in recent years is in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. The meteorite is only 15 to 20 meters long, but creates an explosion that injured more than 1,000 people. And 2019 OK, its volume must be 100 times more.

With such serious destruction potential, 2019 OK must definitely be something that science needs to be observed and discovered early. In fact, in June 2019 science discovered 2019 OK, but its trajectory was not calculated until the last few hours before gliding over Earth. The reason is that this asteroid has orbit in the shadow of the Sun, so it can only be observed at dusk.

About the future of 2019 OK, it has orbit around the Sun for 2.7 years - longer than Mars - but it is elliptical, so there will be times when extremely close to the Sun. This is a very bad trajectory for its own existence, because after all the risk of hitting Earth, Mars or Venus is huge.

Overall, after the calculation, 2019 OK seems to not collide with us in the near future, but science must always be available and should not let such "heart attack" situations happen again.