Divine warning or just a coincidence? A potentially dangerous asteroid will pass tomorrow near Earth "the steroid appears to be wearing a face mask"

Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 Spalding Today

An asteroid with an estimated size of 2 kilometers will pass near Earth tomorow on April 29, at 9.56 GMT dont worry the risk of collision being excluded.

As a unique detail in the images captured by astronomers, the asteroid appears to be wearing a face mask. 

Asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2), discovered by NASA in 1998 will travel at a distance of about 6.2 million kilometers from Earth, at a speed of about 31,300 kilometers per hour.If it collided with Earth, the asteroid would cause "global effects," NASA officials said after discovering the cosmic object.

Radar image of asteroid 1998 OR2 acquired April 18, 2020, by astronomers at Arecibo Observatory. The radar data confirm that 1998 OR2 is at least 2 km in diameter [a little over a mile wide]. These radar images suggest it is spherical. It rotates once every 4.1 hours. Image via Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

In a completely unique way, in the images captured by the specialists from the Arecibo Astronomical Observatory in Puerto Rico, the asteroid seems to be wearing a face protection mask, according to CNN. The asteroid was included by NASA in the "potentially dangerous" category, like any other spacecraft approaching Earth at less than 7,480,000 kilometers.  descopera

The Arecibo Observatory wikipedia

According to information available to specialists to date, the largest asteroid that has passed Earth is 3122 Florence (1981 ET3). The object with a size of about 4-9 kilometers passed our planet on September 1, 2017 and is still expected to "visit" us on September 2, 2057.

3122 Florence is a stony trinary asteroid of the Amor group. It is classified as a near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid. It measures approximately 5 kilometers in diameter. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.0–2.5 AU once every 2 years and 4 months (859 days); the orbit has an eccentricity of 0.42 and an inclination of 22° with respect to the ecliptic. Florence was discovered on 2 March 1981 by American astronomer Schelte J. "Bobby" Bus at Siding Spring Observatory.[3] Its provisional designation was 1981 ET3. It was named in honor of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing the naming citation was published on 6 April 1993 wiki



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Australian Radio Telescope Parkes Joins $100 Million Search for Alien Life

The Parkes radio telescope in Australia is the third telescope to begin searching for signs of intelligent alien life as part of the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project. Credit: CSIRO

Updated today 20/05/2020

$100 million search for intelligent alien life just added a big arrow to its quiver.

Breakthrough Listen has begun using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to scan the heavens, representatives of the ambitious, decade-long project announced Monday (Nov.7).

Parkes, Narrabri radio telescopes to be upgraded to improve Space Connect

The Parkes dish becomes the third telescope to be employed by Breakthrough Listen, joining the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory in Northern California


"The addition of Parkes is an important milestone," billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Milner, founder of the Breakthrough Initiatives, which include Breakthrough Listen, said in a statement. "These major instruments are the ears of planet Earth, and now they are listening for signs of other civilizations."

The Parkes radio telescope can tilt 60° from vertical and would take 15 minutes to perform a 360° rotation. photo: wikipedia.org

The first Breakthrough Listen observations for the Parkes dish came Monday, when scientists turned the telescope toward the Proxima Centauri star system to look for possible signals from alien civilizations.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the sun, lying just 4.2 light-years away from Earth's star. This past August, astronomers announced the discovery of an Earth-size planet orbiting in Proxima Centauri's "habitable zone," the just-right range of distances where liquid water could exist on a world's surface.

It's therefore possible that the planet, known as Proxima b, may be capable of supporting life as we know it, scientists have said.

"The chances of any particular planet hosting intelligent life-forms are probably minuscule," Andrew Siemion, director of the University of California, Berkeley's SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research Center, said in the same statement.

"But once we knew there was a planet right next door, we had to ask the question, and it was a fitting first observation for Parkes," Siemion added. "To find a civilization just 4.2 light-years away would change everything."

Proxima Centauri is also the target of Breakthrough Starshot, a Breakthrough Initiatives effort that aims to blast tiny, sail-equipped "nanoprobes" toward the system at 20 percent the speed of light using powerful lasers. Milner and a group of researchers, including famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking, announced Breakthrough Listen in July 2015. Over the next 10 years, the $100 million endeavor aims to search the 1 million stars closest to the sun, as well as the 100 nearest galaxies to the Milky Way, for possible SETI signals.

The 210-foot-wide (64 meters) Parkes dish, which is operated by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), lies near the town of Parkes, in the state of New South Wales. The radio telescope famously helped relay live video of the Apollo 11 moon landing back to Earth in July 1969, a role featured in the 2000 film "The Dish."

Breakthrough Listen representatives also announced last month that the project would be teaming up with China's new Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) — the world's largest radio telescope — to coordinate SETI observations.


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