{"id":116497,"date":"2020-12-01T07:26:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T15:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/a-mysterious-object-is-hurtling-towards-earth-and-scientists-dont-know-what-it-is"},"modified":"2020-12-01T07:26:47","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T15:26:47","slug":"a-mysterious-object-is-hurtling-towards-earth-and-scientists-dont-know-what-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/a-mysterious-object-is-hurtling-towards-earth-and-scientists-dont-know-what-it-is","title":{"rendered":"A mysterious object is hurtling towards Earth, and scientists don\u2019t know what it is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-mysterious-object-is-hurtling-towards-earth-and-scientists-dont-know-what-it-is.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is an \u201cextremely close,\u201d albeit safe, approach, with the object passing at a distance equivalent to around 13 percent of the average distance between our planet and the moon, astronomer Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project told <em>Newsweek<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The object, which is estimated to measure between 15\u201333 feet across, was discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey based in Maui, Hawaii, on September 17, 2020. This find was confirmed two days later by the Minor Planet Center, which is responsible for the designation of minor bodies in the solar system.<\/p>\n<p>Initial observations suggested that the object was an asteroid. But scientists at CNEOS soon began to suspect that 2020 SO was not a normal asteroid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an \u201cextremely close,\u201d albeit safe, approach, with the object passing at a distance equivalent to around 13 percent of the average distance between our planet and the moon, astronomer Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project told Newsweek. The object, which is estimated to measure between 15\u201333 feet across, was discovered by the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}