The expert spoke about the conditions for the transformation of an asteroid into a dangerous one for the Earth.

If the orbit of a celestial body passing by the Earth changes, the asteroid can become dangerous for the planet. Honorary Doctor of Sciences, lecturer Sergey Chumakov told Izvestia about this on February 12.

According to Chumakov, the orbits of celestial bodies are changeable, since asteroids, traveling through the Solar System, inevitably fall under the gravitational influence of planets.

"Even collisions of asteroids with each other are not excluded, although as we now know, this is extremely rare in the inner regions of the Solar system. And all these processes can affect the orbit of a "safe" celestial body, making it dangerous, that is, passing close enough past the Earth. This scenario is not excluded, although it is unlikely," he said.

Chumakov noted that an asteroid can also pose a threat to the planet if its diameter exceeds 10 m and its density is high enough. So it can reach the surface relatively intact or explode at an altitude of 30-40 km, as was the case, for example, with the Chelyabinsk meteorite.

Asteroids and asteroids: should we be afraid of celestial bodies

The scientist told why earthlings should not be afraid of collisions with space objects.

"The diameter of this object did not exceed 20 m, and the diameter of the Tunguska space body was 100 m. These are very modest figures, as it is not difficult to guess. And we also need to take into account that among the potentially dangerous asteroids, the most "small" ones, comparable to Tunguska or Chelyabinsk, have so far been discovered. There are more of them and they approach the planet much more often than kilometer—long ones," he added.

As the honorary Doctor of Sciences emphasized, astronomers are currently aware of most large asteroids, whose orbits are reliably calculated and predictable. Collisions with known large asteroids are almost impossible, but the problem, according to Chumakov, is that there are unknown celestial bodies whose orbits have not yet been determined.

In the Laboratory of Solar Astronomy at the Institute of Space Research (IKI) On February 11, the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that a large asteroid 162882 (2001 FD58) would fly by at a safe distance from Earth on February 14. It was specified that the celestial body would be at a distance of several million kilometers from the planet. This is the largest asteroid in the last year, which entered the 7.5 million km zone around the planet — the threshold after which objects are considered potentially dangerous.

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