A series of unknown objects are hurtling towards Earth.

(NLDO) - The James Webb Space Telescope has recorded 138 new objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The newly discovered asteroids range in size from a bus to a football stadium. Some of them are hurtling towards Earth.

They are located in a dense population called the "Asteroid Belt", which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The James Webb Space Telescope searches for near-Earth objects by using light from a distant star - Illustration: Ella Maru and Julien de Wit

According to Live Science, a research team led by Associate Professor Julien de Wit, a planetary scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT - USA) tested an in-depth computational method to detect tiny objects through distant stars.

They analyzed thousands of images from James Webb taken of the star TRAPPIST-1, 40 light-years from the Sun, to search for objects within our own solar system that happened to pass through Earth's line of sight to the star.

As a result, they recorded eight known objects and 138 previously unknown objects.

Of these, six appear to have been nudged by nearby planets into gravitational orbits that would have sent them hurtling toward Earth.

These so-called "decameter" asteroids collide with Earth 10,000 times more often than larger asteroids, but their small size makes it difficult for surveys to detect them before their approach.

They are much smaller than Chicxulub - the mega-object that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago - but still pack a significant punch.

Just a decade ago, an asteroid just a few dozen meters across exploded in the sky over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, releasing energy 30 times greater than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima.

Although the explosion occurred at a very high position, the shock wave from it was enough to break thousands of windows throughout the city and injure nearly 1,200 people.

So the newly discovered objects are a wake-up call about the importance of Earth defense missions that NASA and other space agencies are pursuing.

Source: https://nld.com.vn/mot-loat-vat-the-chua-tung-biet-dang-lao-ve-phia-trai-dat-196241218085431593.htm