There are more recent examples from 2023, like in February when asteroid 2023 CX1, twice the size of a Super Bowl trophy, impacted the Earth near Normandy, France, and caused no damage. The same thing happened when asteroid 2022 WJ1 harmlessly exploded around Lake Ontario in late November 2022. In March 2022, asteroid 2022 EB5, half the size of a giraffe, impacted the Earth and caused no damage. While asteroid 2023 DZ2 is smaller, it's still big enough that it wouldn't likely burn up in the atmosphere upon impact.įor context, consider some fairly recent impact events.

Previously, the Davidson Institute of Science, the educational arm of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, saying that an asteroid 140 meters in diameter or more would release an amount of energy at least a thousand times greater than that released by the first atomic bomb. And that's good because at just 90 meters in diameter, the result still could have caused some damage. Still, there were concerns that it could impact the Earth in late March 2026.įortunately, future calculations determined that this won't happen. The last time an asteroid this big passed by Earth at such a close distance was in 2019 when the 130-meter-wide asteroid 2019 OK skimmed past the earth at a distance of under 100,000 kilometers out of nowhere – which is to say it wasn't spotted by scientists until a day before.Īsteroid 2023 DZ2 was spotted a bit earlier than that, having been identified in late February 2023. The Moon only orbits the Earth at a distance of around 384,000 kilometers, so this is practically halfway between us. That's very close, all things considered, cosmic scale or otherwise. The current data shows that asteroid 2023 DZ2 will pass by Earth at a distance of around 175,000 kilometers. While at first, there were some fears that the asteroid could collide with Earth, further calculations quickly dismissed this possibility. Is an asteroid going to hit Earth in 2023?Īsteroid 2023 DZ2 isn't going to hit Earth, but it's going to come very close.Īccording to NASA, 2023 DZ2 is classified as an Apollo-class asteroid, meaning its orbit overlaps with the Earth's orbit around the Sun. But of course, asteroid 2023 DZ2 is much faster, clocking in at over 2,800 kilometers per hour. In terms of speed, these fish are also pretty quick, capable of reaching speeds of around 69 kilometers per hour. Atlantic bluefin tuna are also far heavier than one might think, and they can in fact weigh more than horses.īut suffice to say, a 90-meter-wide asteroid is likely going to be sufficiently heavier than even 22 of these massive tunas. Assuming their maximum length of four meters, the asteroid's size is as much as over 22 Atlantic bluefin tuna fish lined up in a row mouth-to-tail.īut we can't be fin-nished without talking weight and speed, too. NOTE! Consider delaying until first div on pageĪs noted by both the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Atlantic bluefin tuna are usually seen to be around two meters in length, but they can grow to up to a whopping four meters – meaning there are actually many cataloged asteroids that are smaller than a single tuna fish.īut this isn't one of those smaller asteroids, and at 90 meters, asteroid 2023 DZ2 is considerably larger than a fish. If (slot) slot.addService(googletag.pubads())

(function (a, d, o, r, i, c, u, p, w, m) Asteroid the size of 22 tuna to fly closer to Earth than the Moon - NASA - The Jerusalem Post

Big tuna fish