Each and every single day, space rocks enter our planet’s atmosphere. Luckily for us, most of them are too small to be able to pose a threat. While most space rocks have their origin in our own Solar System, it’s much harder for an asteroid to come from another place in the Cosmos and reach our planet.
To have a better idea of how huge the distances between stars are, you should know that the closest solar system to our own is located roughly 4.36 light-years away. That’s Alpha Centauri we’re talking about. For an asteroid to come all the way from that place and land on Earth, it would take a ridiculous amount of time.
But yet again, it can sometimes happen, and we just have a strong reason to believe so.
Interstellar fireball flew over Papua New Guinea in 2014
According to PopularMechanics.com, a fireball hurtling over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was just confirmed by the United States Space Command (USSC) as the first interstellar object to enter our planet’s atmosphere. The speed of the fireball was preposterous, being set at 130,000 miles per hour. Luckily enough, the object broke up while it was heading toward the surface. It’s terrifying to even try to imagine what a big asteroid would do to our planet if it traveled at such speed and managed to collide with us.
NASA is currently keeping an eye with its advanced gears on the sky for any possible threats when it comes to big asteroids and comets that might be approaching our planet. Although it’s clearly impossible to track down any possible threat, considering how unimaginably huge the Universe is, the space agency has done a pretty good job until now. Therefore, there’s no dangerous space rock that could hit Earth in the near future, as far as NASA knows.
