The asteroid Halloween – El Colombiano

If you fall on Earth would damage regional proportions, but it will be 480,000 kilometers, just beyond the orbit of the Moon

It is the asteroid 2015 TB145, 400 meters long, the asteroid ghost or pumpkin for Halloween this will have its closest approach 31.

And while there is no doubt that there will come closer , according to Paul Chodas , head of the Office of Study of close objects (NEO) spacecraft, which has been discovered on 10 this month reminded that any surprise is possible: Chelyabinski event is cool , this 15-meter asteroid that hit close to that population a few years ago and caused damage to 7,200 buildings in 6 cities and injured 1,500 people.

This, indeed, is 28 times bigger. The closer, rubbing will occur at 12 days and is not visible to the naked eye. Moves to 126,000 kilometers / hour.

Can hit Earth in next visit? After the passage of today will never come so close to within 40 years. It is an asteroid visits us every three years but further away.

No ongoing asteroid known to the planet, with which on average every 10,000 years strikes a rock of 1 kilometer. Which it triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs measuring 10,000 meters, which happens every few hundred thousand years.

The next large asteroid known that Earth will rub in 2027, 1999 AN10, of about 800 meters until you reach a lunar distance, according to the Minor Planet Center.

Today we have identified 1,671 potentially hazardous asteroids, those greater than 150 meters to spend at least 7.4 million kilometers. Asteroids are over 12,000.

But what are the asteroids? Ignacio Ferrin , an astronomer at the University of Antioquia, explains that they are “rock density 2.5 gm / cm3, much like terrestrial rocks. A very common type of rock in them are chondrites, which have high nickel and iron, and thus are magnetic. “

There are some near and others in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter , some of which may have an altered orbit, such as 99942 Apophis, which will pass relatively close to Earth in 2019, says Ferrin.

But not everyone is convinced that 2015 TB145 is an asteroid. It is possible for a comet. One is Lance Benner , the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA. The reason is clear: the comets tend to have elongated orbits

That, plus the high-speed 35 kilometers per second, suggest that possibility.. And as the approach to be followed by observatories radar as the Deep Space Network at Goldstone, California, it would be the first to take a picture of a comet.

But it remains to be seen.