Asteroid 2023FK is coming. If it hits the Earth, how powerful and how much damage will it cause?

According to NASA, an asteroid temporarily numbered 2023FK will pass by the Earth this weekend, only 174,000 kilometers away from us, less than half the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It is very thrilling, but humans are lucky enough to escape it after all.

From the temporary numbering rules for asteroids, we know that this is an asteroid that was just discovered this year, otherwise there would not be the word 2023 in its name. According to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the asteroid has entered the tracking phase.

2023FK is about 200 meters in size and is classified as a "city killer". This asteroid passed by the Earth at a distance of only 174,000 kilometers, which is already very dangerous in astronomical events. If it were to stray slightly and come into close contact with the Earth, it would be far more than just destroying a city.

Among the many factors that threaten human survival, asteroid impacts are one of the most important threats. 65 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid destroyed 85% of the Earth's ecological species and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs that had roamed the Earth for 160 million years.

Let's not talk about such a large asteroid. Even an asteroid of only 10 or 20 meters in size will cause great damage to the Earth's ecology. For example, the Tunguska explosion 100 years ago was caused by the impact of an asteroid of about 20 meters; the Chelyabinsk meteorite incident in Russia 10 years ago was caused by an asteroid of only 10 meters entering the atmosphere and exploding.

So, if this 200-meter asteroid hits the Earth, how much damage will it cause? To accurately calculate its impact energy, we need to determine several parameters, including the speed and mass of the asteroid.

NASA did not disclose the speed of the asteroid, only a parameter of about 200 meters in size. Let's make an assumption: the speed of an asteroid that hits the Earth is generally between 20 and 40 kilometers per second. Let's assume that the speed of this asteroid hitting the Earth is 20 kilometers per second; let's assume that this asteroid is a sphere with a diameter of 200 meters and a density of 1,500 kilograms per cubic meter, so the total mass is about 6.3 billion kilograms.

According to the impact energy formula E=1/2mv^2, we can calculate that the energy of the 2023FK asteroid hitting the earth is about 1.26 times 10 to the 18th power joules (1.26*10^18J). How big is this energy? The explosion energy of 1 ton of TNT is about 4184000000 joules. This impact energy is about 300 million tons of TNT equivalent, which is about the power of more than 23,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding at the same time.

If more than 20,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploded at the same time, no matter where they hit the earth, it would be a huge disaster. This disaster is far from being a matter of destroying a city, but a catastrophe for a country or even a state. The disaster will definitely affect the whole world, and humanity and the earth's ecology will suffer long-term destruction and damage.

Some people think that an asteroid impact is just a science fiction and is far away from us. In fact, this threat is like the arrow of Damocles, always hanging over our heads. There are more than 1.7 million asteroids discovered so far, and there are tens of thousands of near-Earth asteroids that threaten the Earth. Many asteroids fly past the Earth every year. Just recently on March 5, an asteroid discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences flew past the Earth. The asteroid is about 30 meters in diameter and is temporarily numbered 2023DU.

Generally speaking, humans have been very lucky in recent years, and these asteroids have avoided the Earth. But will this luck last forever? I don't think so, so humans should develop technology faster, accumulate strength, and have the ability to deal with asteroid attacks as soon as possible. In this way, humans can reproduce and thrive more safely.

What do you think about this? Feel free to discuss.

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