Scientists Just Discovered an Asteroid Heading Our Way. Here ’ s What to Know

Chances are, you haven’t yet made your plans for Valentine’s day 2046. But just in case you’re thinking about it, you may want to make sure you spend the day indoors. That, at least, is the take home message from NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which earlier this week sounded the alarm via Twitter that in just under 23 years, a newly discovered asteroid named 2023 DW—which measures 50 m (165 ft.) wide, or about the size of an Olympic swimming pool—will make a close swing by Earth, with a 1 in 560 chance of colliding with us. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] That doesn’t sound like much, but 23 years is a lot of time for the rock to change its course, and since it was only spotted for the first time on Feb. 27, astronomers have a lot of additional observing to do before they can be certain of its future trajectory. “Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future,” NASA’s tweet read in part. “Orbit analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data comes in.” Warnings about 2023 DW are flooding news sites today—including, well, this one. So how worried should you be? For starters, there’s the size of 2023 DW to consider—which is not that big, but not that small either. It’s nowhere near the 12 km (7.5 mi.) wi...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Tags: Uncategorized Explainer healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news