Asteroid the size of 145 Elmos to fly past Earth on Tuesday, July 15
An asteroid the size of around 145 Elmos is set to pass the Earth on Tuesday, July 15, according to NASA's asteroid tracker.
According to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the asteroid in question has been designated as 2025 MA90, meaning it was discovered and officially recorded this year.
But thankfully this large asteroid won't be coming too close to the Earth, which is fortunate, as scientists working in the field of planetary defense have recently determined that asteroid deflection has more complications than they previously thought.
NASA CNEOS's estimates place asteroid 2025 MA90's diameter as being anywhere between 66 meters to 150 meters. Using the Eyes on Asteroids tool, we get a more conservative estimate of 88.8 meters.
To put that in a more familiar metric, let's use a classic pop culture icon that has helped define the early childhoods of hundreds of millions of people around the world: Elmo.
Yes, the familiar red monster, the most famous Muppet of Sesame Street. We're measuring an asteroid with him.
So how big is Elmo, exactly? There is no shortage of merchandise of the character, all of varying sizes, but how tall is the character in the Sesame Street canon?
No official size has been given by the creators of Sesame Street. However, diving deep into the history of the character, we at The Jerusalem Post were able to find a special 2011 guest appearance by Drew Brees, quarterback for the NFL team the New Orleans Saints.
In this "Word of the Day" segment, where the characters and viewers learn about a new word, Brees demonstrates the word "measure" and proceeds to measure Elmo's height, which clocks in at 24 inches, or 60.96 centimeters.
With that in mind, asteroid 2025 MA90 is around the size of 145 Elmos, going by his Drew Brees-measured height.
As Brees notes in the Sesame Street video, you can use anything to measure, which he promptly proved by measuring Elmo in terms of potatoes and tubes of toothpaste.
According to Brees, Elmo is four potatoes tall, and three tubes of toothpaste tall.
With that in mind, asteroid 2025 MA90's diameter would be the size of 435 tubes of toothpaste, or 580 potatoes - at least the ones used on Sesame Street in 2011.
Of course, were we to use Brees himself, the result would be different, as he stands at six feet tall, or 1.8288 meters, meaning the asteroid's diameter would be around 48.5 Drew Brees.
At 88.8 meters, asteroid 2025 MA90 has the potential to do some pretty substantial damage.
The last asteroid impact to cause major damage to the Earth was in 2013, when an asteroid impacted over Chelyabinsk, Russia. The resulting airburst - when an asteroid explodes after impacting the atmosphere - resulted in a large and powerful shockwave that was felt regionally. Over 7,000 buildings in multiple cities were damaged, and over 1,000 people were injured, mostly by broken glass.
In the grand scheme of asteroid impacts, this was fairly benign, but as an isolated incident, it could be seen as having caused considerable damage. And that asteroid was only around 20 meters in diameter. At 88.8 meters, asteroid 2025 MA90 would be far more destructive.
But what if NASA's largest estimate, 150 meters, was correct? At that size, it would pass the threshold to be considered a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA). According to research from the Davidson Institute of Science, the educational arm of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, an asteroid 140 meters in diameter or more would release an amount of energy at least a thousand times greater than that released by the first atomic bomb if it impacted Earth.
But luckily, asteroid 2025 MA90 isn't going to come too close to the Earth, instead passing by over six million kilometers away.
And this is especially fortunate, considering humanity is not yet ready to combat an asteroid impact.
An asteroid impact is among the most destructive natural disasters that could occur. As such, scientists have been hard at work in the field of planetary defense to try and protect the planet from these giant space rocks. Because yes, it isn't only Elmo that hates certain rocks - if you know, you know.
The most promising effort in this field was the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which slammed into a far away asteroid to see if it could impact its orbit.
While at first this mission seemed to have been a success, a recent study published in the peer-reviewed academic periodical the Planetary Science Journal found that the actual result was more complicated.
Rather than just deflecting the asteroid, the DART impact ejected several boulders out of the main body. These ejections added more force to the impact, almost as much as the DART impact itself. This means that the actual success of asteroid deflection is harder to predict, so humanity still has a way to go before making themselves safe from asteroids.
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