Earth may get surprise visit from asteroids owing to its rotation, warns new study

Issuing a warning about deadly asteroids, researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have said asteroids may show up out of nowhere owing to a recently identified anomaly. Funded by NASA, these experts revealed that the Earth's rotation creates a blind spot, owing to which even if an asteroid is spotted, it seems as if it is not moving. This study was undertaken by the University of Hawaiʻi's astronomer Richard Wainscoat to investigate the incident when an asteroid named '2019 OK' went unnoticed in 2019. Surprisingly, this space rock was spotted just 24 hours before making its closest approach and was just 70,000 kilometers from the Earth.

Scientists explain Earth's rotational anomaly

According to astronomers, all of the asteroids can be deceptive owing to a phenomenon called 'opposition'. Opposition is said to occur when an asteroid in the night sky aligns directly with the line intersecting both the Sun and the Earth. This alignment makes it look like the asteroid is moving in slow motion or is not moving at all, which ultimately makes their discovery nearly impossible. Richard Wainscoat, who led the research later published in the journal Icarus, said as per Daily Mail, "Near-Earth Objects that approach from a direction east of opposition are prone to periods of slow-motion during their approach". He added that since the Earth's rotation cancels the natural eastward motion of asteroids in the sky, the objects look as if they are stationary.

'2019 OK' motion makes Earth's rotation look stationary

This was the same reason as to why the Pan-STARRS1 at Hawaii's Haleakala Observatory was unable to spot asteroid 2019 OK which was way past the threshold of near-Earth objects (NEO). NASA designates a planetary body near-Earth object when it crosses the 45 million kilometers mark of our planet's solar orbit. The astronomers said that 2019 OK was moving in such a way that the Earth's rotation made it look stationary.

"Surveys should take extra care when surveying the sky in this direction, and aggressively follow-up new slow-moving objects", Wainscoat said, however, he added that this issue is not something over which people should lose their sleep as the chances of an asteroid hitting the Earth is minimal at least for a few centuries. However, NASA, which does not intend to take a chance launched its Double-Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to test technologies that can deflect a potentially hazardous asteroid. 

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