Beware of the Beast! 1,000 foot wide asteroid that could wipe out an entire city to come within a million miles of Earth on Sunday

Impact would be similar to a nuclear warhead detonating if Earth were to be hit
Experts say it would wipe out an entire city
Beast is travelling at 31,000 miles per hour or 50,400 kilometers per hour

PUBLISHED: 01:57, 7 June 2014 | UPDATED: 14:13, 7 June 2014

At over 1,000 feet wide, it could cause an explosion measured in megatons and wipe out a city if it were to hit Earth .

On Sunday, a huge asteroid nicknamed 'the Beast' will pass less than a million miles from us.

Scientists say it will only take a 100-foot wide object to do great destruction to the planet - but say they are confident the Beast will pass us by.

The newfound asteroid will safely pass Earth on June 8 from a distance of about 777,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers), more than three times farther away than our moon. Designated 2014 HQ124, the asteroid was discovered April 23, 2014, by NASA's NEOWISE mission, a space telescope adapted for scouting the skies for asteroids and comets. The telescope sees infrared light, which allows it to pick up the infrared glow of asteroids and obtain better estimates of their true sizes.

THE BEAST

2014 HQ124 is designated a 'potentially hazardous asteroid,' or PHA.

This refers to those asteroids 460 feet (140 meters) in size or larger that pass within 4.6 million miles (7.4 million kilometers) of Earth's orbit around the sun.

There are currently 1,484 known PHAs, but none pose a significant near-term risk of impacting Earth.

It is tearing through space at 31,000 miles per hour or 50,400 kilometers per hour.

It will, however, pass within a million miles on Sunday - equivalent to 3.2 lunar distances or about 716,500 miles.

'There is zero chance of an impact,' said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

'In fact, it's fairly common for asteroids to pass near Earth.

'You'd expect an object about the size of 2014 HQ124 to pass this close every few years.'

Astronomers say their main concern is that The Beast, or Asteroid 2014 HQ124 was only detected on April 23 before its nearest approach to the Earth despite space surveillance systems scanning outer space for asteroids and other threats.

'HQ124 is at least 10 times bigger, and possibly 20 times, than the asteroid that injured a thousand people last year in Chelyabinsk, Siberia,' Slooh space telescope astronomer Bob Berman said.

'If it were [to] impact us, the energy released would be measured not in kilotons like the atomic bombs that ended World War II, but in H-bomb type megatons.'

Berman said that object was 'maybe the size of a movie theatre,' while NASA compared its size to a bus.

'It's not a super-large one. You call it The Beast, but there are much bigger ones,'

American physicist Mark Boslough, an expert on planetary impacts, told Slooh.com during the webcast. 'We've discovered most of the ones greater than a kilometre.'

Experts say the asteroid would wipe out an entire city and be similar to a nuclear warhead detonating if Earth were to be hit

Boslough said that a planetary strike with an object the size of HQ124 would have a catastrophic effect.

'It's moving at a relative speed of 14 kilometres per second.

'But if it were headed toward us, gravity would speed it up and it would hit the Earth with a speed of 18 kilometres a second,' he said.

Based on its size, and assuming it would still be a solid rock at the time of impact, it would lead to an explosion of about 2,000 megatonnes, enough to wipe out an entire metropolitan area,' Boslough said.

The Beast was discovered by the NASA Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer.

It is tearing through space at 31,000 miles per hour or 50,400 kilometers per hour.

The Beast has been classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid.

KATCHING MY I

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Saturday, 7 June 2014