Asteroid could hit earth (original) (raw)
September 25, 2004 — 10.00am
The only thing feared by Asterix and his comic book friends during their adventures in ancient Gaul was that the sky would fall on their heads.
For protection, they regularly called on the Celtic god Toutatis.
So when astronomers in France discovered a mountain-sized asteroid that is a good candidate to one day slam into Earth, they decided to give it the same name.
Next Wednesday, the peanut-shaped Toutatis will whizz by just 1.5 million kilometres away - four times the distance to the moon - and near enough to see with a pair of good binoculars.
"Toutatis is a most appropriate name for an asteroid that comes so close," said Nick Lomb, curator of astronomy at Sydney Observatory. Its visit next week will be the nearest fly-by this century of such a large space rock, at least of those we know about. And it is the closest Toutatis has come in more than 600 years.
Although its eccentric passage through the solar system brings it within Earth's orbit every four years, it has not been this near since 1353 and will not be this close again until at least 2562.
At 4.6 kilometres long and 2.4 kilometres wide, 4179 Toutatis, as it is officially known, would overshadow the CBD of Sydney. "It's about the size of Mount Kosciuszko," Dr Lomb said.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and left a 180-kilometre wide crater in Mexico, was about eight times as big.
"So if Toutatis were to hit it might not actually wipe out all life on Earth, but it would probably destroy several continents. It would be extremely catastrophic," he said.
Following its discovery in 1989, scientists were waiting in 1992 to take radar images of the passing asteroid which revealed it has large craters and ridges, presumably from past violent impacts. Rather than spinning smoothly, it slowly tumbles forward, like a badly thrown football. Its orbit is so chaotic the asteroid's position cannot be accurately predicted in the distant future, Dr Lomb said.
For someone standing on Toutatis, Earth would look about the same size next week as the moon looks to people on Earth.
The best night to see it, preferably with a telescope, will be Tuesday, when it will be high in the southern sky and moving about twice the width of a full moon in an hour. On Wednesday night it will be fainter and lower down, near the bright pointer star, Alpha Centauri.
Sydney Observatory will hold viewings of the asteroid on Tuesday night. Bookings are essential.
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