An asteroid as wide as a skyscraper

Space is quite a cluttered space, even though it may look very wide and vast to us. In mid-September, a mammoth space rock hurtled past Earth — well, about five million kilometres away that is.

This is a great distance from our point of view, but not great enough for Asteroid 2000 QW7, as it is named, to go unnoticed by space watchers. Measuring between 1,000 and 2,000 feet (300 to 600 metres) wide, it glided by our planet moving at about 14,361 mph (23,100 km/h). Although the asteroid posed no danger this time around, NASA has kept track of the rock since 2000 and shall continue to track its future travels. The asteroid will next drift near Earth on Oct. 19, 2038.

Colliding black holes

Scientists have predicted that three monstrous black holes about one billion light-years from Earth are steadily scooching toward each other, and someday, they will probably collide. The super massive black holes lie at the centre of three merging galaxies, sucking up dust and gas from their surroundings.

Currently, the distance from one black hole to the next ranges from 10,000 light-years to 30,000 light-years, but scientists predict that the black holes will eventually merge just like their parent galaxies.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 28th, 2019