After conducting independent research, dr marcus wolf made a grisly discovery based on his findings. An interstellar object threatens to collide with earth. All of life will be obliterated if it does. The seven mile wide comet will cause a mass extinction event if nasa and other international space agencies can’t devise some kind of solution to circumvent this apocalyptic scenario. There’S only room in massive underground bunkers to save a million people as such a lottery will be devised to select the lucky few that will be saved from the extinction level event don’t be alarmed, though this was all just the premise of 1998’s deep impact, a film That was absolutely panned by critics, but did shockingly well at the box office that same year, armageddon a film with such a similar plotline you’d think that there would be lawsuits was released to similarly tepid critical reception and yet audiences came out in droves to see bruce Willis save the world, as we know it from certain doom. Both films were among the highest grossing features of the year when they were released with deep impact coming in at number six and armageddon, taking the number one position in terms of ticket sales there’s, something so alluring about the idea of a comet or asteroid colliding with Earth and wiping us out of existence, maybe it’s our collective memory of what happened to the dinosaurs or perhaps it’s tied to our general obsession with all things apocalyptic, but it seems like humanity, can’t shake the idea of the world being destroyed via some kind of impact.
If you’re a fan of this type of thing, hopefully you had your telescopes out on september 24th when an asteroid made the closest flyby in years, although it wasn’t quite as doom and gloom as this video’s title implies. The object known as 2020sw made an extremely close pass by our little blue planet. Apparently it didn’t get the memo about the whole social distancing thing we’re, going to tell you a little bit more about that in a second but first we’re going to talk about the top 10 asteroid impacts that we know about, and hopefully we won’t be adding any New ones to this list anytime soon freda fort crater. This one touched down an estimated 2 billion years ago in free state, south africa. The crater it left behind is absolutely massive. It has a radius of 118 miles and is the largest known impact structure on the planet. Unesco declared it a world heritage site back in 2005. sudbury basin. This one is slightly more recent scientists estimate that it landed 1.8 billion years ago in ontario. Canada it’s also considered one of the largest impact structures on earth and has a diameter of 81 miles, acromen crater 580 million years ago in south australia. This asteroid made a crater with a diameter of 56 miles. Today the crater is a giant lake known as lake acromen, woodley crater. It seems like these cataclysmic events on our list keep getting closer and closer to our present day.
This one collided with our world 364 million years ago in western australia. You can’t actually see this crater from the surface as such there’s been a lot of debate about its actual size, but most estimates report its diameter as being somewhere between 25 and 75 miles long maniconigan crater. Yet another lake that got its start as an impact event is lake manickanigan in quebec, canada, the galactic event that caused this geological formation happened roughly 215 million years ago. Its crater is one of the best preserved of its kind on the planet. It stretches a mind. Boggling 62 miles across by the way, if you’re enjoying this video so far, you should really stick around to find out all about that. Most recent asteroid that got close to hitting our planetary home stick around to find out what would have happened if it did and don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel. So you can keep up with all our latest factstastic videos tap the bell icon to turn on notifications, moro, quaing crater in northwest south africa 145 million years ago, a giant meteorite slammed into the kalahari desert. The fossilized remains of the meteorite can still be found there. Today, kara crater, if you were alive in nanettia russia, 70.3 million years ago, you would have seen quite the fireworks display when this giant meteor hit the earth. Today, however, not much can be seen of its impact, as its crater has mostly eroded.
Some have made the claim that the site is actually the result of two different impacts: the first being kara and the second, which is called ustkara czech shulu crater. This one is famous for a number of reasons for one it’s, one of the largest impact craters we’ve. Ever discovered, its estimated diameter is between 106 to 186 miles long located on the yucatan peninsula in mexico. This crater is believed to be the result of the asteroid that caused the mass distinction of the dinosaurs it’s. Also one of the most beautiful impact craters on the planet. Satellite images of the structure are absolutely breathtaking: popeye guy crater, you can find this crater out in the brutal frozen siberian tundra. If you intend to make a voyage to this location, bring your excavation gear, because russian scientists believe the crater is lined with trillions of carats of diamonds. It’S said that this is one of the largest diamond deposits in the world. These precious gemstones are known as impact diamonds. The asteroid that made its impact here fell some 35.7 million years ago, chesapeake bay, crater, we didn’t even know this crater existed until the 80s it’s only about 125 miles away from dc and is approximately 53 miles in diameter. The impact event happened roughly 35 million years ago. So what about the most recent asteroid? 2020 sw. It made its pass on september 24th, 2020., when it whizzed on by it was closer to our planet than the moon gets in its orbit.
The interesting thing is we didn’t even know this asteroid existed until a week prior when it was discovered at mount lemmon survey in tucson arizona. It was only 16 700 miles away when it made its pass. To put this in some kind of perspective, the moon is about 238 900 miles away from us on average. This is equivalent to 30 earths away. The asteroid passed at a distance that’s only two earths away. That’S awfully close, some satellites used for weather and tv are actually further away than the asteroid came to hitting us. Initially, we weren’t sure if it would collide with our planet or not, but upon further investigation, scientists were able to ascertain its orbital trajectory with a high degree of precision based upon its brightness. When it passed over the pacific ocean astronomers were able to determine it was approximately 15 to 30 feet in diameter or about the size of a small rv. Even if it were to have a trajectory that crossed paths with earth. An object of its size coming into our atmosphere would have almost surely broken up before reaching the ground. The result would be a brilliant fiery streak across the sky called a fireball, dr paul chotis, from the center for near earth. Object studies reassures us that quote: there are a large number of tiny asteroids like this one and several of them approach our planet. As close as this several times, every year after making its close approach, 2020 sw will continue to make its journey around the sun.
It won’t make another return to our earth moon system until 2041. So if you missed it, you might be waiting for a while when it finally does come back, it will make a flyby much further away this time. Another asteroid is on its way. Researchers discovered an asteroid back in 2018 at the zwicky transient facility in california that will be swinging by earth on november, 2nd 2020. that’s right just in time for the u.s elections. Well, the day before, to be precise, if you thought this year, couldn’t get any worse with the pandemic civil unrest and polarization of society through a divisive election cycle. Can you imagine what things would be like if you threw in an apocalyptic asteroid collision just for kicks before you get your panties in a bunch? It should be noted that 2018 vpi, as it’s known, is only the size of a small car and has only a 0.41 chance of entering earth’s atmosphere, even if it were to defy the odds and make an impact. The majority of it would break up in earth’s atmosphere. Some people might hear a boom and pebble sized meteorites might fall onto rooftops, but that’s it if you’re expecting any kind of deep impact or armageddon like asteroid. Touchdown in your life you’re most likely going to be disappointed or relieved, depending on your perspective, to find out that nasa doesn’t expect any sizeable asteroid or comet to hit our planet in the foreseeable future.
They take that kind of thing seriously as you’d expect. Even so, they estimate the likelihood of an asteroid striking the earth that’s capable of taking out a city at a point, one percent chance per year, so it’s not technically impossible. So, even though we’ve been lucky so far and no asteroid is currently enroute to our earthly home there’s always the chance that something might be headed our way. Are you afraid of an asteroid hitting earth in your life or do you think it’s just the kind of thing you see in the movies? Let us know what you think in the comment section and before you move on to something else.2LFIS0xh1vY
