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"This Beast" Will Approach Earth This Weekend
A massive asteroid aka "the Beast" spotted in April is expected to buzz past Earth this weekend, according to reports.
"The Beast" however is not expected to make contact with the Earth's atmosphere, nonetheless professionals skywatchers will be keeping close tabs on the massive space rock. Last year, similarly massive asteroids had gone undetected and exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in a huge fireball.
"What's disconcerting is that a rocky/metallic body this large, and coming so very close, should have only first been discovered this soon before its nearest approach," Bob Berman, an astronomer with the online astronomy collective Slooh, told National Geographic. "HQ124 is at least 10 times bigger, and possibly 20 times, than the asteroid that injured a thousand people last year in Chelyabinsk."
Reportedly, the Beast is around 1,100 feet wide.
"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," he added.
A video feed of the flyby will be provided by Slooh. The feed will also include time-lapse images from a Slooh robotic observatory in Chile.
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