Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Asteroid will shoot by earth on eve of US poll
Space rock is Biden its time for 1st Monday in November
AN asteroid hurtling towards Earth is set to arrive a day before the US presidential election – with a 0.41% chance of hitting the planet.
The space rock, known to astronomers as 2018VP1, is predicted to pass by on the first Monday in November.
A day later, on November 3, Joe Biden is due to go head-to-head with Donald Trump at the US polls. Space agency NASA said there were three potential impacts.
But they said a direct strike is unlikely “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days”.
The asteroid, two metres wide, was first identified two years ago at
California’s Palomar Observatory. Due to its small size, it is not considered a “potentially hazardous object”.
That means although its orbit comes close, it is not large enough to cause “significant regional damage” if it collided with the planet.
A NASA spokesman explained: “One technique suggested for deflecting an asteroid is nuclear fusion weapons set off above the surface to slightly change the velocity without fracturing it.
“High speed neutrons would irradiate a shell of material on the surface of the asteroid facing the explosion.
“The material in this surface shell would then expand and blow off to produce a recoil upon the asteroid itself.”
He said only a “very modest” change in velocity of just a few millimetres per second could, over several years, push an asteroid away from any impact.
But he warned: “The trick is to gently nudge the asteroid out of harm’s way, not blow it up. Though popular in the movies, that creates a bigger problem when all the pieces encounter the Earth.”