Good things don't come in threes. Venus is concealing at least three city-killer asteroids that could strike Earth in weeks without warning, potentially wreaking havoc upon our planet before we can react.
“Twenty co-orbital asteroids (space rocks in the orbit of two celestial bodies) of Venus are currently known,” the authors warned in the a rock calyptic study, which was published in the journal “Astronomy and Astrophysics.”
The international research team, led by Valerio Carruba of Sao Paolo University in Brazil, wrote that at least three of the asteroids — 2020 SB, 524522, and 2020 CL1 — that circle the Sun in tandem with our twin planet have unstable orbits that take them dangerously close to Earth, The Daily Mail reported.
If this shaky trajectory is shifted only slightly by a small gravitational change or other force, they could be set on a collision course with our planet, per the study.
“Co-orbital status protects these asteroids from close approaches to Venus, but it does not protect them from encountering Earth,” the researchers warned, according to the Daily Galaxy.
Carruba and co came to this conclusion by using imitation space rocks to simulate a range of possible outcomes over 36,000 years, finding that there is a sizable population of low-eccentricity asteroids — those previously thought to be harmless — that could be propelled toward Earth via gravitational shifts and other factors.
To make matters worse, the aforementioned cosmic rocks' orbits make them almost invisible to Earthly detection devices.
While scientists at NASA and other space agencies routinely track potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, the telescopes can't spot rocks in a sub-orbital path with Venus due to the sun's glare, which shields them like a cosmic cloaking device, WION reported.
Due to this interstellar blindspot, the Rubin Observatory in Chile would have only two to four weeks to spot deadly asteroids, leaving us little time if they were on a collision course.
For reference, a mission to engineer something that could deflect a killer space rock generally takes years to formulate.
“Low-e (low eccentricity) Venus co-orbitals pose a unique challenge, because of the difficulties in detecting and following these objects from Earth,” the authors write in their conclusion.
It would be bad news if one of these intergalactic gravelstones hit home.
Asteroids 2020 SB, 524522, and 2020 CL1, measure between 330 and 1,300 feet in diameter, making each one capable of destroying entire cities and causing massive fires and tsunamis, the Daily Mail reported.
An impact would leave a crater over two miles wide and generate one million times more energy than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.
Unfortunately, due to the constraints of terrestrial monitoring equipment, we may have to look to the stars for a solution.
“We believe that only a dedicated observational campaign from a space-based mission near Venus could potentially map and discover all the still ‘invisible' PHA (potentially hazardous asteroids) among Venus' co-orbital asteroids,” the authors wrote.
However, the powers that be better hurry as researchers predict that co-orbital asteroids' orbits could become unpredictable in just over 150 years — a blip in the interstellar timescale.
An asteroid streaking toward Earth. “We aim to assess the possible threat that the yet undetected population of Venus co-orbiters may pose to Earth, and to investigate their detectability from Earth and space observatories,” the authors wrote. Vadimsadovski – stock.adobe.com Venus (pictured) is concealing the space rocks in its orbit. revers_jr – stock.adobe.com A diagram showing the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA/LPI
An asteroid streaking toward Earth. “We aim to assess the possible threat that the yet undetected population of Venus co-orbiters may pose to Earth, and to investigate their detectability from Earth and space observatories,” the authors wrote. Vadimsadovski – stock.adobe.com Venus (pictured) is concealing the space rocks in its orbit. revers_jr – stock.adobe.com A diagram showing the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA/LPI
An asteroid streaking toward Earth. “We aim to assess the possible threat that the yet undetected population of Venus co-orbiters may pose to Earth, and to investigate their detectability from Earth and space observatories,” the authors wrote. Vadimsadovski – stock.adobe.com Venus (pictured) is concealing the space rocks in its orbit. revers_jr – stock.adobe.com A diagram showing the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA/LPI