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A giant asteroid will be passing Earth tonight and its progress will be filmed and streamed live online.
The asteroid, 2000 EM26, is the size of three football fields and while it poses no threat to Earth, it will come within around 8.8 lunar distances from our planet – around 3,380,000km.
In fact, NEA 2012 DA14 was the closest object of such size to fly past Earth in our lifetimes. Slooh successfully tracked DA14 live from its Canary Island observatory using special imaging techniques.
On that same day, however, something else unexpectedly tore through the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging thousands of houses, breaking innumerable windows, and causing injuries from broken glass.
This object, later discovered to be an asteroid, was 65 ft (20 m) in diameter and exploded 18 miles above Siberia releasing the equivalent energy of more than 20 atomic bombs (approximately 460 kilotons of TNT).
While analysts continue to debate the significance of the event, many believe the residents of Chelyabinsk were extremely lucky to escape this celestial encounter with no loss of life. To commemorate the February 15 event, the Russian government announced that ten gold medals for winners on February 15th at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics will be embedded with Chelyabinsk meteor fragments.
Agencies/Canadajournal
