For those of you still fretting that Earth will get smacked with a 40 meter-wide asteroid next year even though reliable experts have said that these fears are overstated, here’s a computer-animated rendering of how exactly Earth won’t be in any danger.
Well, at least as far as asteroid 2012 DA 14 goes.
The video, which was uploaded by YouTube user CelestiaDev, is daringly accurate with its measured time estimates of the asteroid’s trajectory. Several different vantages are presented that all show the asteroid, while at times looking to collide with earth, completely missing our planet. What’s more is that you’ll see how it does in fact get closer to Earth than many of our own satellites hanging around in orbit.
The video isn’t just compiled by somebody’s inventive imagination, either: the depiction was constructed using the calculations of Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s HORIZONS solar system data and ephemeris computation service.
Honestly, though, I’m really not sure if this animation will allay any of the concerns people have about our planet getting hit with an asteroid or if it will actually make them worse because, as the video shows, that asteroid looks to pass frighteningly close to Earth.
Still. It’s going to miss us by over 13,000 miles. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces in nature. We break this force every single day of our lives and we are not 25-mile-wide space rocks. If we can have our way with Earth’s gravitational force anytime we like, you really think our planet’s gravitational pull is gonna be enough to suck in asteroid DA 14?
It’s seriously not going to happen, people.
