Two meteors are about to fly close to the earth

A pair of meteorites the size of a rock falling in central Russia last month will fly near the globe later this week.

Illustration of two meteors in the solar system. (Photo: berkeley.edu)

2013 EC 20 - the name of a meteorite - will be about 148,800km from the globe - March 16 by US time. A day later, meteorite named 2013 EN 20 will fly close to the earth with a range of more than 446,000km. Astronomers only discovered this pair of meteorites a few days ago, Space reported.

On the afternoon of March 9 in the eastern US time (early morning March 10, Hanoi time), an asteroid about 140 meters long flew about 960,000km from the earth - about 2.5 times the distance. between the earth and the moon. Moving at a speed of 41,600km / h, it can destroy a large city if it hits the earth.

Compared to the size of 2013 ET, the name of the meteorite above, eight times larger than the meteorite that plunged into central Russia on February 15. The meteorite explosion in Russia is equivalent to about 20-25 times the atomic bomb that the US throws down on Japan's Hiroshima city during World War II.

The US Congress has asked the US Aeronautics Agency (NASA) to search and track meteorites with diameters of 1,000 meters or more. Scientists believe that NASA has identified 95% of such meteorites. However, only about 10% of meteorites with a diameter less than 1,000m are detected.

About 100 meteorite towns fall to the earth every day. Astronomers predict that meteorites fall like the one in Russia on February 15 in about 100 years.