More than two million times stronger than the explosion of the port of Beirut.. This is what will happen if Benno hits the ground

More than a billion tons of TNT and an explosive energy of two million times the energy left by the Beirut Port explosion.

This is what might happen if an asteroid of interest to NASA collides with Earth, a possibility confirmed by scientific studies and a US space agency mission.

And the asteroid “Bennu” landed on its surface, last year, the “Osiris Rex” spacecraft of “NASA” and took samples from it, and a team of scientists affiliated with the agency studied some of the data obtained by the spacecraft to find out the “threat” posed by this asteroid to the planet during the past year. the coming centuries.

Asteroids are rocky bodies with a diameter ranging from a few meters to several kilometers, and the largest bodies are called dwarf planets, and the largest of them are planets.

Bennu is classified as a "potentially dangerous asteroid", which means that the width of the asteroid in this case is more than 140 meters, and it could theoretically come close to 4.65 million miles from Earth.

Bennu ranks second in NASA's record of 72 near-Earth particles that might collide.

The asteroid, dark in color and resembling a giant oak tree, is about 334 million kilometers from Earth, and its width is 500 meters.

And its rugged surface includes large and dangerous rocks.

Scientists say that, like other asteroids, it formed in the early stages of our solar system, and may hold clues to the origins of life on Earth.

It is about the same distance from the sun as the Earth is from it, and it is believed that it is rich in minute organic molecules where carbon is a major component, and it dates back to the early days of the solar system.

The minerals in this asteroid may contain water, which is another important element in the evolution of life.

Scientists believe that asteroids and comets that collided with Earth in the early stages provided it with organic compounds and water necessary for life on the planet, and atomic analysis of samples taken from the asteroid “Bennu” may provide important evidence to prove this assumption.

The magazine "National Geographic" published a report on the impact of this rocky mass on the planet, in light of recent studies conducted around it, which indicate that the asteroid has a greater chance than was believed to affect our planet sometime during the next 300 years, and may begin This effect by the end of this century.

The report focused on a new study published in the "Icarus" journal, which relied on the data of the "Osiris Rex" probe, and the team conducted "accurate" calculations of the Bennu orbit and indicated the extent of its proximity to Earth in the future.

Then the researchers, led by David Farnocchia, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, analyzed the risk of collision between now and 2300, and found that in the year 2135, Bennu will reach a distance of about 123,000 miles from the Earth's surface, and that the probability of a collision occurs. A future collision over the next three centuries is 1 to 1750, which is a slightly higher probability than previous estimates.

Bennu is by far the best asteroid in the solar system... We know where it will be more than 100 years in the future, said University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Loretta, OSIRIS Rex principal investigator and senior author of the study. 

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