An asteroid about 70 centimeters (27 inches) in diameter recently hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded above Siberia, Russia. However, the celestial body did not damage the Earth's surface and became a magnificent sight to watch as it burned up in the air.
It has left people wondering what happens when an asteroid hits the Earth.
According to Asteroid Day, several characteristics affect an asteroid's intensity of damage. These characteristics are composition, shock wave power, trajectory angle, and impact terrain. Therefore, its size does not always matter. When this celestial object hits the Earth, a huge amount of energy is released, which creates a massive explosion.
These characteristics determine how much damage the body will do on the planet, as its speed also matters.
What happened in Siberia when an asteroid hit the Earth?
According to New Scientist, astronomers spotted an asteroid, later named CoWEPC5, moving toward the Earth hours before it finally hit the atmosphere in Russia. It marked the fourth one in 2024 that hit the planet.
On Tuesday morning, the European Space Agency issued an alert and warned that the rock would light up the sky in the evening above northern Siberia. However, as this one was not a big one, there was no need to blow it up with a nuclear explosion.
According to the portal's report, an early warning of asteroids helps astronomers in their observations and study. They are able to gather all the informational data from the object or even collect some fragments that manage to reach the surface.
Ahead of the explosion, Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen's University Belfast confirmed that the size of the celestial body is not at all risky for the people in Siberia. However, an early warning is always useful.
"It’s a small one, but it will still be quite spectacular," Fitzsimmons said.
"It will be dark over the impact site and for several hundreds of kilometres around there’ll be a very impressive, very bright fireball in the sky."
Fitzsimmons also talked about how astronomers learned early about a similar event in 2008, which led to the recovery of small parts of the body.
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"The beauty there was that the reflectivity of the meteorites exactly matched the reflectivity as measured by telescopes before it hit, showing you that really nice direct link between what we saw out there in space and what we then found later on, on the ground."
Locating such objects coming toward the Earth early enough helps prevent a lot of damage. Both NASA and ESA work on locating such objects and warning astronomers before they reach the surface.
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