NASA has lately warned about a potentially dangerous, peanut-shaped asteroid which may slam Earth one day. Dubbed as 2015 BN509, the asteroid is 200 meters (660ft) wide and 400 meters (1,310ft) long. The space rock was found to pass by Earth at a distance of 70,500km (44,000mph) last week. The closest proximity between the Earth and the asteroid was equal to 14 times the distance between the Moon and Earth.
The Arecibo Observatory, a giant radio telescope detected the asteroid passing by in Earth in close proximity. “The peanut shape comes from the fact that it is a contact binary where the two parts [of asteroids] could not successfully orbit each other and fell back together,” said Dr Edgard Rivera-Valentín, a planetary scientist with the Universities Space Research Association who studies data from The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Business Insider quoted. READ MORE
