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# TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TgSKV2RZ.m3u8" -->
## Video: TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth

[Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TgSKV2RZ.m3u8) (2:01)

![TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/TgSKV2RZ/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2013-02-13. A near miss of the earth by an asteroid could foreshadow future catastrophe from space. TIME's Jeffrey Kluger explains._


---

Jul 27, 2023 3:30 PM UTC

---

## More From This Series

[All Videos](https://time.com/video/)

[Asteroids Are Slamming Into Earth Twice as Much as Before, Scientists Say](/video/m2t8SP0V/)

### Asteroids Are Slamming Into Earth Twice as Much as Before, Scientists Say

[Asteroid Expected to Pass Extremely Close to Earth Sunday](/video/3O1rZ9xX/)

### Asteroid Expected to Pass Extremely Close to Earth Sunday

[A Three-Mile-Long Asteroid Buzzes the Earth](/video/gy8VaMS5/)

### A Three-Mile-Long Asteroid Buzzes the Earth

---


## Transcript

[ MUSIC ] Earth lives in a shooting gallery of asteroids, any one of which could hit us one day. Here's what you need to know. [ MUSIC ] What caused all the stir this week, was a 140 foot long asteroid that buzzed the Earth at an altitude of just 17, 000 miles. Now that sounds like a lot, but it's only 1 / 14th of the weight of the Moon, and it's actually 5, 000 miles below the altitude in which some of our communication satellites fly. The fact is Earth gets hit by space debris all the time. A hundred tons of material enter our atmosphere everyday, including at least one basketball size rock.

And every few months a rock about the size of a Volkswagen comes in also. Most of that material is incinerated long before it reaches the ground. But if a rock gets to about 100 to a 150 feet, a significant chunk of it can survive, and that can produce problems. It's not just the size of an asteroid that causes problems. It's the energy it carries as it speeds into the atmosphere. That's why a rock that's relatively small, just 120 feet across, can produce a blast equivalent to 2. 4 megatons, or 180 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb. [ MUSIC ] An asteroid the size of the one that just buzzed the Earth passes by about once every 40 years and will hit the ground about once every 1200 years.

The kind of asteroid that causes local, or even global devastation, arrives about once every 10, 000 to 100, 000 years. Now that sounds comforting, but as the dinosaurs could tell you it only takes one.

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