Giant asteroid to pass Earth Tuesday - NASA

A huge asteroid is set to pass Earth on Tuesday, October 3, according to NASA's asteroid tracker, Report informs via the Jerusalem Post.

The asteroid in question has been designated 349507 (2008 QY), according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

While the asteroid is traveling too far to pose any risk to the Earth, a possible impact event with it could become a worldwide catastrophe.

Asteroid 349507 (2008 QY) is estimated to have a possible diameter as wide as 1.2 kilometers. As far as asteroids that skim past the Earth go, that's insane, far exceeding the size of most close flybys.

Asteroid 349507 (2008 QY) is not going to be flying anywhere close to the Earth, with it set to pass by at a distance of over 6 million kilometers. But this is a good thing, since an actual impact from an asteroid this big would be nothing short of apocalyptic.

According to research from the Davidson Institute of Science, the educational arm of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, an asteroid over 140 meters in diameter would release an amount of energy at least a thousand times greater than that released by the first atomic bomb if it impacted Earth.

Something even larger – over 300 meters wide like the Apophis asteroid – could destroy an entire continent. An asteroid over a kilometer in width – like asteroid 349507 (2008 QY), which flew past the Earth in early March 2022 – could trigger a worldwide cataclysm.

But luckily, Earth is free of this danger, with NASA having already said the planet is at no risk of any severe asteroid impacts for the next century.