Conspiracy theorists have warned that a giant asteroid will strike Earth between Sept. 22-28 in an event that could obliterate the planet.
Those who buy into the conspiracy say the Earth will end in three months on blogs and websites and also claim that after the giant asteroid strike, a seven-year tribulation period will follow.
Statements from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, however, counter the claims of a giant asteroid hitting the Earth.
A spokesperson for the U.S. space agency said that no asteroid or comet is currently known to be on track to hit our planet, which means that there is little likelihood for a major collision to happen. No humans in the past 1,000 years are known to have been killed by a meteorite or by the effects of one impacting Earth, NASA notes.
The prophecy appears to have come from self-proclaimed prophet Efrain Rodriguez, who claims that he learned of the coming doomsday via God's message that says the asteroid would hit the ocean near Puerto Rico. The impact would lead to an earthquake and tsunami that would devastate the East Coast of the U.S. and Mexico as well as the coast of South America and Central America.
Nope, says NASA. "In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years," NASA says in a background paper on asteroid strikes. Scientists likely could identify a threatening near-Earth object large enough to potentially cause catastrophic changes in the Earth's environment, and most astronomers believe that a systematic approach to studying asteroids and comets that pass close to the Earth makes good sense. "It's too late for the dinosaurs, but today astonomers are conducting ever-increasing searches to identify all of the larger objects which pose an impact danger to Earth," NASA notes.
Large objects that approach Earth's atmosphere typically burn up on entry although NASA is aware of the dangers of certain foreign objects striking the Earth. It is developing strategies that could identify asteroids and other extraterrestrial objects that may possibly hit the Earth and is identifying options for defending the planet.
Some claims likewise said that a problem will occur due to an incident that will happen at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, which just had a major upgrade that scientists hope could shed more light on dark matter and pave the way to the discovery of other particles.
Photo: NASA/JPL
