
Things that go bump in the night
Is it give way to the right, or give way to the left?
Astronomers have spotted an asteroid of sufficient size and orbit to cause Earth-wide destruction – if it were to ever strike our planet. And that's a mighty big if. 2022 AP7 was discovered alongside two other large asteroids – 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27 – by a team of scientists looking for objects within the inner Solar System …
That depends on the hemisphere you inhabit, I would say. All constellations looked upside-down to me when I travelled down-under. Maybe it is simpler if Earth can claim right-of-weight: Small rocks give way to large rocks, especially those with passengers.
Were Venus to 'get lucky' and be hit by the asteroid, could it blow enough of the atmosphere away to remove the greenhouse effect and leave Venus itself (herself?) habitable (after a few thousand years to cool down)?
Of course there would be a lot of debris, some of which might reach earth orbit, but I bet the astronomers and planetary scientists would be delighted to witness such an event.
I doubt it, though I'm not an expert.
Venus is almost earth-sized, and the rocks in question are smaller than the dinosaur-killer, which didn't throw off that much of our atmosphere (some, yes, and there's probably bits of dinosaur-era rock that ended up on the moon, but not enough to massively change atmospheric density).
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