An Asteroid Bigger Than The Empire State Building Will Whizz By Earth This Week

Why are giant asteroids frequently in the news? Not a month can go past without reports of a planet-killing asteroid’s close shave with Earth.

Today it’s (7482) 1994 PC1, a 1.1-kilometer asteroid that’s due to get to within 0.00752 AU of us at 4:51 p.m. EST on January 18, 2022 as it races past at 43,754 miles per hour.

What you need to know about (7482) 1994 PC1

That sounds pretty close, right? It’s not at all close—0.00752 AU is a fraction of the distance between the Earth and the Sun (1 AU). It’s 699,000 miles/1,125,000 kilometers. That’s five times the distance of the Moon’s orbit, which is 238,855 miles/384,400 kilometers. Still, it is the largest known asteroid coming in 2022 closer than 10 lunar distances.

You can watch it live online as the Virtual Telescope Project streams it live at 20:00 UTC on January 18, 2022.

Asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 is classified as an Apollo asteroid, a class of objects named for asteroid 1862 Apollo. Such asteroids have an orbit that is larger than Earth’s orbit around the Sun and their path crosses Earth’s path. (7482) 1994 PC1 orbits the Sun every 572 days and its path does occasionally cross Earth’s orbital path around the Sun.

The 2022 flyby is the closest asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 has come to Earth since 1933 and for the next 200 years.

So astronomers know this asteroid very well. This isn’t a dangerous moment for us.

So why the panic?

Why asteroids are frequently in the news

There are, I think, three main reasons why news stories about not-very-dangerous asteroids are popular:

Astronomers are suddenly finding more, and smaller, asteroids

NASA increasingly funds a ground-based program to identify objects larger than one kilometer in diameter. They do so on the orders of the US Congress. Hence there are now more advanced sky surveys (such as NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) that are opening-up an era where more, and smaller, asteroids are being discovered, and their orbits mapped.

The current known asteroid count is: 1,113,527 according to NASA. What’s more, much smaller asteroids are being found when they’re very close to Earth, so stories appear in the media about asteroids that come out of nowhere with very little warning.

Though (7482) 1994 PC1—as its name suggests—was discovered way back in 1994 …

The phrases ‘Near-Earth Object’ and ‘Potentially Hazardous’ are technical terms that are often misinterpreted

All “Near-Earth Object” refers to is asteroids and comets with orbits that bring them to within 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the Sun. “Potentially Hazardous” is a phrase used by astronomers to refer to a NEO with an orbit that can make close approaches to the Earth and is large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact.

Yes, kilometer-sized impactors like (7482) 1994 PC1 would be globally devastating—hence the propensity of the media to write panic-laden reports—but these terms refer to the lifetime threat of an object. They’re not actually dangerous in the here and now—or even thousands of years into the future.

People loves to read stories about asteroids

No, don’t blame “media hype.” Don’t even bother. “The media” are hard-working journalists who work independently of each other and have one main goal—to be read. Nowadays they get a lot of data on the popularity (or otherwise) of their work and—guess what—stories about asteroids are popular! Yes, people are drawn to negative news stories. They always have been and they always will be.

The trouble is, what happens when an asteroid really is incoming … will anyone believe what they read? That could be an issue, but I expect a balance to be struck soon enough. In the years ahead the closeness—or otherwise—of passing asteroids is less and less likely to get read, and thus won’t make the news as easily. So when a big one is found that really could be a problem we’ll know about it!

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.