{"id":149290,"date":"2022-11-01T16:23:22","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T21:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/huge-planet-killer-asteroid-discovered-and-its-heading-our-way"},"modified":"2022-11-01T16:23:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T21:23:22","slug":"huge-planet-killer-asteroid-discovered-and-its-heading-our-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/11\/huge-planet-killer-asteroid-discovered-and-its-heading-our-way","title":{"rendered":"Huge \u2018planet killer\u2019 asteroid discovered \u2014 and it\u2019s heading our way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/huge-planet-killer-asteroid-discovered-and-its-heading-our-way2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Writing in the <a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-3881\/ac8cff\/pdf\">Astronomical Journal<\/a>, lead study author Scott Sheppard and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington say they have found three \u201crather large\u201d asteroids, one of which \u2013 2022 AP7 \u2013 crosses the Earth\u2019s orbit, making it a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA).<\/p>\n<p>With a diameter of about 1.1km to 2.3km, the team say 2022 AP7 is the largest PHA discovered since 2014 and probably in the top 5% of the largest ever found.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny asteroid over 1km in size is considered a planet killer,\u201d said Sheppard, adding that should such an object strike Earth, the impact would be devastating to life as we know it, with dust and pollutants kicked up into the atmosphere, where they would linger for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing in the Astronomical Journal, lead study author Scott Sheppard and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington say they have found three \u201crather large\u201d asteroids, one of which \u2013 2022 AP7 \u2013 crosses the Earth\u2019s orbit, making it a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA). With a diameter of about 1.1km to 2.3km, the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149290","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\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}