Image courtesy of ESA
Joel Kontinen
An 'invisible
threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day
collide with Earth, simulations show
Could a killer asteroid one day collide with Earth? According to a new study, it could. This bring
to mind the killer asteroids mentioned in the book of Revelation: “The third
angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from
the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The
name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter,
and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.” Rev. 8:10-11.
Researchers think
there are more hidden space rocks lurking around Venus. All but one of the
planet's known co-orbitals have eccentricities greater than 0.38, meaning they
have very elongated trajectories around the planet. This suggests there is an
observational bias, likely because objects with lower eccentricities are
probably being obscured by the sun's glare.
Co-orbitals can
also move around relative to Venus, which can change their chances of colliding
with Earth in the future. Previous research has shown that this likely happens
to the space rocks once roughly every 12,000 years — known as a co-orbital cycle.
We know that Earth
is not 12,000 years old so there is a problem which this.
Source:
Harry Baker 2025 An 'invisible threat': Swarm of hidden 'city killer' asteroids around Venus could one day collide with Earth, simulations show | Live Science June 4
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