Asteroid 2001 FO32: When will it pass Earth and can I watch it?

 Astronomers and scientists will be peering into space today as the Earth experiences the largest asteroid flyby of the year. A gigantic chunk of space rock, officially known as Asteroid 231937 (2001 FO32), is hurtling past our planet at a speed of 77,000 mph (124,000 kph) later today. At 1.7km tall, it’s bigger than Ben Nevis and more than twice the size of the tallest building on Earth – the Burj Khalifa. 

It will be the largest asteroid to pass by the Earth this year. Because 2001 FO32 is coming within 93 million miles of Earth, it’s designated a ‘Near-Earth Object’ (NEO) by Nasa. The space agency keeps a particularly watchful eye on these asteroids. But, in this case, says there’s nothing to worry about. A size guide showing how big Asteroid 2001 FO32 is (Metro.co.uk) ‘We know the orbital path of 2001 FO32 around the sun very accurately, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since,’ said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). ‘There is no chance the asteroid will get any closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.

When will the asteroid pass by Earth? 

The trajectory of the asteroid as it passes through the solar system (PA) The asteroid will pass closest to Earth at around 5.30pm this afternoon. How close will it get? The asteroid will be much, much further away than this illustration implies (Getty) As it passes today, it will be doing so at a safe distance of 1.2 million miles – the equivalent of five times further away than the Moon. 

During the flyby today, 2001 FO32 will pass by at about 77,000 mph (124,000 kph) – which is faster than the speed at which most asteroids encounter Earth. The reason for the asteroid’s unusually speedy close approach is its highly inclined and elongated (or eccentric) orbit around the sun, an orbit that is tilted 39 degrees to Earth’s orbital plane. 

This orbit takes the asteroid closer to the sun than Mercury and twice as far from the sun as Mars. Will I be able to see it? You’ll need some gear to spot the asteroid. Yes, but you’ll need some equipment to do so. It should be possible to see the asteroid through an eight inch aperture telescope just after sunset on March 21. To pick it out, you’ll need to be looking slightly above the southern horizon.  ‘The asteroid will be brightest while it moves through southern skies,’ said JPL’s Chodas. 

‘Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and at low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using moderate size telescopes with apertures of at least 8 inches in the nights leading up to closest approach, but they will probably need star charts to find it.

 Will the weather be a problem? 

Nasa’s Infrared Telescope Facility will be watching the asteroid so you don’t have to. (Nasa) Unfortunately, yes. Daylight will be the biggest barrier to spotting the comet. As you likely won’t be able to make it out against the sunlight. Cloud cover can also pose a problem. If the clouds interrupt your view, you’re out of luck. Thankfully, there’s a solution. The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 will be hosting a live web stream of the asteroid flyby. 

So if you don’t have a telescope, or can’t be bothered to go outside, this is a much easier way to watch it. MORE : Don’t panic, but the largest asteroid flyby of 2021 is happening this week.

The image of 2001 FO32 was taken when the space rock was 19.5 million kilometres from Earth.

In the image, one can see the rock reflecting sunlight so it appears as a bright object in the night's sky against a backdrop of stars.

The Virtual Telescope Project said: "The potentially hazardous asteroid (231937) 2001 FO32 is safely approaching us and, while waiting for its fly-by on March 21, we captured it last night.

“Scientists believe stray asteroids or fragments from earlier collisions have slammed into Earth in the past, playing a major role in the evolution of our planet.”

Something known as the Yarkovsky effect can cause an asteroid to alter its course.

The Yarkovsky effect happens when a space rock is heated in direct sunlight and cools down to release radiation from its surface.

Ultimately, this can lead to slight changes in the orbit of an asteroid - smaller than 40 kilometres - which can have consequences over millions of years.

Harvard University said: "The Yarkovsky effect describes a small but significant force that affects the orbital motion of meteoroids and asteroids smaller than 30 tp 40km in diameter.

"It is caused by sunlight; when these bodies heat up in the Sun, they eventually reradiate the energy away in the thermal waveband, which in turn creates a tiny thrust.

"This recoil acceleration is much weaker than solar and planetary gravitational forces, but it can produce measurable orbital changes over decades and substantial orbital effects over millions to billions of years."

An asteroid as wide as the Golden Gate Bridge is long will hurtle past Earth next month. But although it will be the biggest and speediest asteroid to fly by our planet this year, there's no reason to panic.

The space rock, officially called 231937 (2001 FO32), is about 0.5 to 1 mile (0.8 to 1.7 kilometers) in diameter and will come within 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) of Earth at 11:03 a.m. EST (1603 GMT) on March 21 — close enough and large enough to be classified as "potentially hazardous," according to a database published by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

An asteroid is designated as "potentially hazardous" when its orbit intersects with Earth's at a distance of no more than about 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) and it is bigger than about 500 feet (140 meters) in diameter, according to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). 

Small asteroids pass between Earth and the moon several times a month, and their fragments enter and break up in Earth's atmosphere almost daily, according to NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).

Telescopes in New Mexico that are part of the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program — an MIT Lincoln Laboratory program funded by the U.S. Air Force and NASA — detected the asteroid on March 23, 2001, according to EarthSky. Observatories have monitored it ever since. Scientists used these observations to calculate the asteroid's orbit and determine how close the space rock will come to Earth when it whizzes by at almost 77,000 mph (124,000 km/h). 

No known asteroid poses a significant risk to Earth for the next 100 years. The current biggest known threat is an asteroid called (410777) 2009 FD, which has a 1 in 714 (less than 0.2%) chance of hitting Earth in 2185, according to NASA's PDCO. 

What is Quantum Entanglement? - Detailed explanation

What is Quantum Entanglement?

Firstly: One reason I feel compelled to write this is that many people say something like this:

“Take two dissimilar objects that come in a pair (e.g. gloves), put them in two identical boxes, forget which box is which and send them to distant locations. Look inside one box and bam! you immediately (re)discover what’s in the other box! And that is just like entanglement!”

This is worse than useless as an analogy for quantum entanglement. Physicists call this sort of system a classically correlated mixed state, and it is totally different from entanglement. Obviously, there is nothing marvellous or extraordinary about classical correlation, and anyone who has ever listened to the terms in which physicists talk about entanglement must suspect that this is a cop-out. If you have ever heard this, please un-learn it right now, and read on.

Anyone who confuses entanglement with classical correlation deserves to be glove-slapped.

Now, to properly understand quantum entanglement, it’s crucial to talk about Bell's theorem. No need to go into the maths because fortunately, the basic concept is quite intuitive.

Imagine some quantum mechanical process (in my lab we use Spontaneous parametric down-conversion) produces a bunch of particle pairs. We take one particle from each pair, line them up in order and put them all in a box, which we give to an experimentalist called Alice. We similarly package the other particles and give them to Bob. These boxes each have two buttons (labelled 1 and 2), which when pressed perform a measurement on the next particle in line inside the box. The measurements have two possible outcomes, which show up as either a red light on the box, or a green light.

Alice and Bob go off to distant locations and every minute press either one of the buttons. Their choice of which button to press each minute is independent of all previous choices, and completely up to them. They each record which lights flash in response to each measurement. Later, Alice and Bob meet up and compare notes.

Immediately, and before looking at the other’s data, the first thing they agree is that there is no obvious pattern to which light flashes in response to which button is pressed. Whichever Alice presses on her box, either its red light or its green light flashes with apparently 50% probability. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to which one or why.

Shortly after, however, they realise there are strong correlations between the behaviour of the two boxes. For the particular settings of these boxes, Alice and Bob’s observations, which perfectly agree with the prediction of QM, are the following:

1. Where both Alice and Bob pressed button 1, the lights that came up on each of their boxes, whilst still apparently random, were the same as each other 100% of the time.
2. Where one of them pressed button 1 and the other pressed button 2, the lights that came up on each of their boxes were the same as each other 99% of the time, and different 1% of the time.
3. Where both Alice and Bob pressed button 2, the lights that came up on each of their boxes were the same as each other 96% of the time, and different 4% of the time.

Now initially this may seem arbitrary but not especially strange. Perhaps this set of results can be explained by something like the gloves-in-a-box situation? In other words, due to some process of which we are ignorant, each particle in each pair is allocated certain properties at their generation which give rise to these correlations. These properties, which stay with the particles after their generation right until their measurement, determine which light flashes. Since they are specific to each particle, they are called local, and since we can’t fully access them (the measurement outcomes seem random) they are called hidden: hence local hidden variables.

If that is your first thought, you aren’t alone. Einstein, Podolosky and Rosen thought exactly the same thing in their famous “EPR paradox". Their conclusion was that QM, which makes no mention of the local hidden variables, was incomplete: there must be a hidden layer of reality below the structures in QM, which if accessed gives precise and pre-determined answers to which outcome will occur in response to each measurement.

Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen were wrong about that. This is where the genius of Bell’s theorem comes in: it proves that the distribution of outcomes above is impossible with local hidden variables. You’ll need your seatbelts for this bit.

I’ll have you know God plays dice whenever he damn well chooses.

Assuming that these results are explained by local hidden variables requires that each particle knows nothing about what measurement is performed on any other particle. Hence, the only thing that the hidden variables can control is how each particle responds to a given measurement. There are therefore four predetermined lists of potential outcomes (i.e. lists where each entry is either RED or GREEN): the outcomes for Alice’s particles when subject to measurement 1 (list A1) or measurement 2 (list A2), and similarly, lists B1 and B2 for Bob’s particles.

Now we know from Alice and Bob’s comparison that performing measurement 1 on both particles always gives the same outcome: the lists A1 and B1 are identical.

We also know that A1 and B2 overlap 99%, as do A2 and B1. Now since A1 and B1 are the same, this means that the minimum overlap of A2 and B2 is 98%, which happens if all the discrepencies with B1 and A1 respectively happen on different pairs. BUT- this contradicts the final observation, which is that there is only 96% correlation between the A2 and the B2 measurements!

Hence there can be no predetermined lists A1, A2, B1 and B2. Local, predetermined outcomes, which are ubiquitous across the rest of physics and everyday experience, cannot explain quantum correlations! And yet, we see these correlations in our laboratories- I myself have measured them with my own hands. This is the central point of what quantum entanglement is- a real physical phenomenon that cannot be explained in the terms we normally fall back on.

Loss of Individuality!!!

Let me explain. All we need is a lil’ bit of Probability, some Ice Cream and Dank-memes!!!

Quantum entanglement has a very enigmatic persona in pop-culture and it’s quite infamous with it’s interpretations in physics community, especially during the early stages of development of Quantum-Mechanics.
Einstein use to call it, “Spooky action at a distance!”. But what is so ‘Spooky’ about quantum-entanglement, that even Einstein had a hard time wrapping his head around? We’ll see.

But first we need to understand a special kind of notation Physicists use to define Quantum-states, it’s called the Bra-Ket notation:
⟨S|Q|S⟩$⟨S|Q|S⟩$

Here quantity ‘Q’ is measured for a state ‘S’. The part left of ‘Q’ is called ”Bra” and the one on the right is called “Ket”. We can also define the probability of a state as:
A|S⟩$A|S⟩$

here A2$A^2$is the probability of state “S” happening, when the wave function collapses ( fancy way of saying, when the quantum system is observed).

So here’s how our story goes:

• Your friend Bablu comes over to meet you after a long time. He urges you to go out with him, as it’s been a long time since you guys hung-out.
  You tell him about this awesome Ice-cream shop near your house “Tillu-Ice-cream”.

• Both of you marched to the Ice cream shop. He asked for Strawberry, while you had Vanilla. But as you both were returning from the shop, his wife calls and asks him to come home as soon as possible. You guys planning to eat both the flavours.
  He asked you, “If there’s anything that we can do about it?”. And you being a Physicist, accepted his challenge.

• In your lab, you have made the Quantum Entangler-4000, a machine which can entangle any number of things together. So you insert both icecream buckets in the machine. And what you get are 2 buckets of “Entangled Flavour Ice Cream“.

Now that you have entangled both flavours, each bucket behaves as a quantum system of 2 superimposed states (here, flavours). So when you observe the system i.e. whenever you take scoop from the bucket and eat, then only you get to know what is the current flavour of your ice cream. The mathematical formulation of this process will look something like this:

Here the coefficients (A, B) would be such that A2+B2=1.$A^2+B^2=1.$ For example if both of the states (given in the kets) have equal probability then :|Vanilla⟩,|Strawberry⟩⟹12−−√|V,S⟩+12−−√|S,V⟩$|\text{Vanilla}⟩,|\text{Strawberry}⟩⟹\sqrt{\frac{1}{2}}|V,S⟩+\sqrt{\frac{1}{2}}|S,V⟩$

And if the states have different probabilities of occurrence, then their respective kets will have different coefficients, example:
|Vanilla⟩,|Strawberry⟩⟹14−−√|V,S⟩+34−−√|S,V⟩$|\text{Vanilla}⟩,|\text{Strawberry}⟩⟹\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}}|V,S⟩+\sqrt{\frac{3}{4}}|S,V⟩$

So if you get Vanilla in your scoop, Bablu will get Strawberry and vice-versa. You'll get one of the two flavour randomly with each scoop, but yours and Bablu’s ice-cream flavour will never be the same.

This is called Quantum-Entanglement, because here outcome of one bucket cannot be determined independently without simultaneously getting to know the state of the other bucket.
(“Hmmmmm, ok so this Quantum-entanglement is a little weird”, you say “but it’s not mindblowing or spooky or anything like that…. huh?”)

BUT WAIT! There is more…

• So Bablu happily goes to his home, now that he can eat both flavours.
  15 minutes later, your girlfriend arrives and says, “Hey! Guess what? I brought the Chocolate flavour from Tillu’s Ice cream, and looks like you already have one bucket. We can entangle them and then eat, just like we did the last time.”

• So now you again put your buckets in the Quantum Entangler-4000, what comes out is 2 buckets of 3-flavour entangled ice cream. (Vanilla-Strawberry-Chocolate)

• So you both start eating and in the first bite you find, it’s Vanilla. You ask your girlfriend, what did she get? “Strawberry!!!”,she says.
  Then she asks, “Who has the Chocolate flavour?”

• At the Same-Time, somewhere far far away….

It doesn’t matter where Bablu lives, it can be 10 Km away or 1000 Km away or 100 Light-years away. Superposition of states will collapse simultaneously. Due to quantum-entanglement 3 buckets have lost their independent identity and have started behaving like a single entity.