What if an asteroid the size of the Washington Monument (170 meters high), or what is equivalent to a 56-story building, hits the Earth? This could happen in the month of December.
The current great threat to our planet lies outside of this and is called 2018 AH. NASA has announced, thanks to its tracker, that an asteroid will pass close to Earth at the end of December, specifically on the 27th. Since 1971 a meteorite of such size has not been observed to pass so close to us.
This asteroid has entered into the most dangerous classification of NASA: the Apollo rating. This implies that the orbit of the celestial body will come into contact with that of our planet.
However, and in order not to alarm the world population, they have reported that it is unlikely that it will end up colliding with usas it is expected to happen to a whopping distance of 4.5 million kilometers.
What if something like this finally happens?
Various predictions have been made and if this comes true, it is estimated that could cause the death of about six million peopleas the explosion would cause widespread destruction similar to that of a nuclear bomb.
To this should be added that a large part of the land would be devastated and inert and tsunamis and earthquakes would be generated. As an example, the 17-meter meteorite that exploded in 2013 in the atmosphere near Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaged some 7,000 buildings.
The main problem with this type of asteroids, considered smaller, is that are difficult to locate in advance, so they investigate the potential that a nuclear bomb dropped with exact precision could have.
This is something that has been investigated at John Hopkins University, in Baltimore (USA), virtually and successfully. Although, beware, they warn that if the calculations at the moment of truth fail, it would be unstoppable.
At the moment we are only talking about virtual tests. Nevertheless, the threats of destruction of the planet do not stop and it is expected that by 2028 an asteroid of a similar size pass just 240,000 kilometers from Earth. However, it is also not believed to come into contact with our planet.