A Fridge-Sized Asteroid Collided with Earth on March 11th and We Don’t Even Know About It

Whether it’s 1979’s Meteor or 1998’s Armageddon, Hollywood has a long history of movies about asteroids destroying the earth. But scientists usually detect these asteroids in the movie, so the main characters get to provide some memorable one-liner suggestions on how to avert it early on. Meteor, for example, features the USSR and the United States working together against one other. On the other hand, Armageddon depicts heroism from unlikely sources, averting the destruction of the globe. Science-defying stunts are also common in the name of entertainment.

Asteroids, on the other hand, are a different story. According to Live Science, just five asteroids were discovered before their collision with Earth. The majority of these asteroids strike the planet with little or no warning. Recently earth just collided with an asteroid the size of a refrigerator, with only a two-hour warning period. Here’s how this fridge-sized asteroid was discovered.

The asteroid was first detected by an astronomer named Krisztián Sárneczky.

After astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky discovered 2022 EB5 at the Piszkéstet Mountain Station on March 11, 2022, the Konkoly Observatory pulsed with life. NASA’s “Scout” impact hazard assessment system was activated as soon as the Observatory alerted officials to the fast-moving rock’s existence. Scout alerted the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as soon as it was certain the meteor was on its way (JPL). According to the JPL, the CNEOS team went to work predicting the asteroid’s impact time and location.

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Observatories from all around the world began tracking and targeting the asteroid.

Davide Farnocchia of the JPL says – “Scout had only 14 observations over 40 minutes from one observatory to work with when it first identified the object as an impactor. We were able to determine the possible impact locations … As more observatories tracked the asteroid, our calculations of its trajectory and impact location became more precise.” It took a global effort, exactly like those seen in movies, to follow and target the object before it struck.

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Predicting the exact point where the fridge-sized asteroid would hit.

The asteroid slammed into the Earth at a speed of 39,600 miles per hour just 120 minutes later. It burst into flames when it entered the atmosphere at a diameter of 6.5 feet. Scientists have determined that when eagle-eyed Sárneczky first sighted the rock, it was about one-third of the distance between the moon and Earth.

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