by Staff writer
A boulder-size asteroid exploded over Africa, just hours after its discovery at the weekend.
On Saturday, June 2nd, sky-watchers in Botswana reported an extremely bright fireball in the sky.
The 2-meter-sized space rock smashed into the atmosphere going 17 kilometers per second, disintegrated high in the atmosphere, and briefly lit up the landscape.
This will be the third time scientists have spotted an incoming asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth.
The previous times were in 2008 and 2014.
Scientists say there is no much cause for alarm as the asteroid, although moving at an incredible speed of 10 miles per second caused minimal impact and much of it was burned up in the atmosphere.
The asteroid, dubbed 2018 LA, was discovered out near the moon’s orbit early Saturday morning, aiming straight for Earth.
Meanwhile, the year 2135 may mark the end of the world as an enormous asteroid is likely to crash into Earth that year.
Asteroid Bennu has a diameter of more than 500 metres would unleash 1,200 megatons of energy on impact, 80,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.
The asteroid weighs around 79 billion kilograms, some 1,664 times as heavy as the Titanic!
According to abundant geological evidence, it was an asteroid roughly 10 km (6 miles) in diameter that hit Earth about 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs.
