Featured Image Credit: Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images
Researchers are warning that three city-killing asteroids a million times more powerful than atomic bombs could strike Earth.
2025 was already shaping up to be dramatic, with mystics like Nostradamus and Baba Vanga predicting the rise of a 'new' global conflict.
Meanwhile, NASA made an emergency decision surrounding the threat of 2024 YR4 after the chances of impact continued to rise, as well as fears over its potentially catastrophic consequences.
Well, folks, it seems we're set for more disaster.
Advert
According to a new study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Venus may be concealing a number of dangerous asteroids.
And at least three of them could strike Earth with devastating force, potentially without warning.
“Twenty co-orbital asteroids [space rocks in the orbit of two celestial bodies] of Venus are currently known,” the authors warned in the study titled 'The invisible threat'.
"Co-orbital status protects these asteroids from close approaches to Venus, but it does not protect them from encountering Earth."
Led by Valerio Carruba of São Paulo State University in Brazil, the international team identified three specific asteroids - 2020 SB, 524522, and 2020 CL1 - that pose the greatest threat.
The asteroids reportedly have unstable orbits that bring them dangerously close to Earth. The study identified a very small Minimum Orbital Intersection Distance (MOID) for each asteroid, which is the closest distance between their orbit and Earth's orbit around the Sun.
Even a minor gravitational nudge from another body could send them on a collision course towards our planet, the study explained.
Using computer simulations spanning a range of 36,000 years, the team found that numerous low-risk asteroids could eventually pose a threat to Earth.
Even more troubling, these space rocks are nearly impossible to detect with Earth detection devices.
Despite NASA scientists continuously tracking asteroids, the current paths of this trio can't be located with telescopes due to their suborbital path with Venus. So, they're effectively very well hidden. Therefore, the team believes that a space probe should be launched towards Venus.
This so-called 'cosmic blind spot' means observatories like the Rubin Observatory in Chile might only have two to four weeks' notice before impact, which isn't long at all.
"In this work, we investigated the collisional hazard that an undetected population of Venus’ co-orbital asteroids at low eccentricities may pose to Earth," the authors wrote in their conclusion. “Low-e [low eccentricity] Venus co-orbitals pose a unique challenge because of the difficulties in detecting and following these objects from Earth.”
