APOPHIS – Killer Asteroid?
How old will you be on Friday 13, 2029? That is how old you will be when a large
asteroid, called Apophis, comes very, very close to our planet. Asteroids are rocks
that circle the sun in space and sometimes come close to Earth and even hit it. Most
asteroids are very small and, if you are lucky, you can sometimes see them in the
night sky as ‘falling stars’.
However, most scientists believe one large asteroid, about six to twelve kilometers
across, hit the earth and killed all the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Apophis
is also big. Scientists discovered it in 2004 and they say that it is about 300 meters
across. That’s about the size of a large sports stadium. An asteroid this size,
according to scientists, is not large enough to destroy our world, but it is large enough
to destroy several cities. It will probably miss the earth, they say, but not by very
much – it will miss us by about only 35,000 kilometers – that’s much closer than our
moon which is about 240,000 kilometers away. Another way of thinking about it is
that it will miss us by only a few minutes. If you don’t find that scary, then consider this: the same asteroid will visit earth just a few years later, in 2036, again on Friday 13. Again, it will miss our planet, but again by only a very small distance ... probably. The only sure thing is that all the eyes and telescopes in every country in the world will be watching the skies on those two days.
1. The paragraph is about an asteroid.
2. Falling stars are rocks.
3. In Paragraph 1, what does ‘it’ refer to? (Mihin sana 'it' viittaa)
4. How large is the Apophis asteroid?
5. Apophis killed all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
6. Why are scientists worried?
7. In Paragraph 2, what does ‘they’ mean?
8. How far away is the moon from Earth?
9. What is the name of the asteroid that will come close to Earth in 2036?
10. Scientists are sure that the Apophis asteroid will miss our planet.
