A newly published study in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics has raised global alarm after revealing that at least three massive asteroids capable of wiping out an entire city could be on a collision course with Earth in the coming weeks.
The asteroids, identified as 2020 SB, 524522, and 2002 CL1, are currently locked in an orbit with Venus. While they pose no immediate threat to Venus, scientists warn that a small gravitational nudge could deflect one or more of them onto a path straight toward Earth.
“These co-orbital asteroids are protected from close encounters with Venus, but not with Earth,” said lead researcher Valerio Carruba from São Paulo State University in Brazil.
What makes these space rocks particularly dangerous is their position hidden in the Sun’s glare, they are almost invisible to ground-based telescopes. As a result, astronomers would have little time to act if one were headed toward our planet.
According to the study, if one of these asteroids were to impact Earth, it could create a crater over 3 kilometers wide and unleash energy a million times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Such a blast would be enough to level a major city and trigger widespread destruction.
The Rubin Observatory in Chile, which tracks near-Earth objects, would only be able to give a warning of two to four weeks ahead of any possible impact far too short a window for meaningful planetary defense.
To address the blind spot, researchers suggest deploying a dedicated space-based observatory closer to Venus’s orbit. Only such a system could consistently monitor and detect these elusive asteroids hidden in the solar glare.
This latest warning serves as a stark reminder that while humanity’s ability to track cosmic threats has improved, there remain dangerous gaps in our detection systems especially when it comes to asteroids lurking in the Sun’s blind zones.