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Asteroids Are Coming for Us
In the Philippines, a recently discovered asteroid burst into a brilliant green blaze that could be seen for hundreds of miles. It was a colorful and stunning explosion. The space rock has gained entry into an incredibly exclusive club because it was only discovered earlier that day.
It’s spectacular, and it could be deadly.
The nearly 3-foot-wide (1-meter) space rock, known as 2024 RW1, was found by astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey early on Wednesday (Sept. 4), according to a post made by the European Space Agency (ESA) on the social media platform X. NASA has supported a project at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory near Tucson called the Catalina Sky Survey, which looks up into the sky to find potentially dangerous near-Earth objects.
According to ESA experts, the “harmless” asteroid was expected to fragment in the atmosphere, and “people in the area may see a spectacular fireball [meteor].” And that’s precisely what took place.
According to Live Science’s sister site Space.com, the asteroid fragmented above the western Pacific Ocean close to Luzon Island in the Philippines on September 5, at approximately 12:46 p.m. ET (0:46 a.m. local time).
The American Meteor Society reports that the disintegrating space rock emitted a bright green glow, perhaps due to its high…
