A roughly egg-shaped asteroid the size of three football fields is headed toward the Earth and is scheduled to make its closest pass on December 11. 

4660 Nereus headed towards Earth

Named after the ancient Greek proto-god Nereus, the asteroid is also known by the provisional designation 1982 DB.  4660 Nereus was first discovered in 1982. The asteroid orbits the sun every 664 days and is set to return 12 more times in the coming decades. Classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), its orbit brings it relatively close to the Earth several times, orbits almost twice for every orbit of the Earth. Next month, it will pass within 2.4 million miles of the Earth, roughly 1000 times the distance of the moon, whizzing by at  6.578 kilometers per second. But in February 2060, it will come within 1.2 million kilometers. It will be in the region again on March 2, 2031, and again in November 2050.

In Greek mythology, Nereus was the eldest son of Gaia, the Earth, and of her son, Pontus, the Sea. In Homer’s Iliad, Nereus was portrayed as a shapeshifter and prophet known as “The Old Man of the Sea” who was known for his truthfulness and virtue.

Asteroids: Source of wealth or cause for concern?

These near passes have made the asteroid a compelling target for scientists who have considered sending probes to visit the asteroid. At 330 meters long, Nereus is larger than 90% of asteroids. Asteroids are attractive for mining. In 2019, scientists announced the discovery that  Psyche 16 was a “golden asteroid”. Parked in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, they estimated the asteroid’s minerals to be worth $700 quintillion.

A far more dire concern driving scientists to send rockets to asteroids is the prospect of a catastrophic collision with the Earth. On November 23, NASA will be launching its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. Carried into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, its mission will be to evaluate technologies that can be used to prevent a hazardous asteroid from striking Earth. The target is a 500-foot wide asteroid known as Didymoon which orbits a much larger space rock known as the Didymos primary body.

If all goes as planned, DART should smash into Didymoon when it is within 11 million kilometers of Earth on October 2, 2022, at a speed of roughly 13,500 mph. Ground-based telescopes and planetary radar will observe the impact and assess the results of the test.

Planetary defense became a practical mission for NASA when they established the Near-Earth Object (NEO) program in 1998 to track asteroids that were on a trajectory that would bring them close to home and that measured 460 feet in diameter or larger. NASA defines NEOs as “an asteroid or comet that approaches our planet less than 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.” Since its inception, the NEO has identified almost one million asteroids with  90 percent of them measuring larger than 3,200 feet across. To be qualified as having a close approach, the NEO must be within 121 million miles of the Sun and within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit around the sun.

The Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) was established in 2016 to detect any potentially hazardous object. Since the PDCO was established, at least four major impacts have been reported. Only three impact events have been successfully predicted in advance, usually by only a few hours.  Currently, predictions are mainly based on cataloging asteroids years before they are due to impact. This works well for larger asteroids as they are easily seen from a long distance but is ineffective for predicting smaller objects that can still be quite destructive.

NASA is currently tracking around 20,000 near-Earth asteroids. Any asteroid about 500 feet or larger with an orbit that brings it within 4.7 million miles of Earth is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, NASA officials have said. At the moment, scientists have identified more than 20,000 near-earth objects (NEO) and around 40 new ones are being discovered every week. Of the known NEOs, around 5,000 of these are classed as “potentially hazardous.” CNEOS estimated that a cataclysmic collision between an asteroid and the earth that threatens the future of civilization occurs on average once per 100,000 years. But the threat of unseen dangers lurking directly overhead is far more common than previously thought. Over 17,000 near-Earth asteroids remain undetected in our solar neighborhood

Despite these impressive statistics, the NEO has logged some significant misses. On 15 February 2013 a meteor approximately 66 ft entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia at a speed of approximately 40,000 mph. Due to its high velocity and shallow angle of atmospheric entry, the object exploded in an airburst over Chelyabinsk Oblast, at a height of around 18.5 miles, releasing 26 to 33 times as much energy as that released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima. The object was undetected before its atmospheric entry, in part because its radiant was close to the Sun. Its explosion created panic among local residents. About 1,500 people were injured seriously enough to seek medical treatment and some 7,200 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion’s shock wave. 

16 hours later, 367943 Duende, an asteroid approximately 100 feet in diameter, passed within 17,200 miles of the earth.

In September, NASA announced that a new study raised the possibility that the asteroid Bennu could hit Earth sometime by 2300.At 1,600 feet across, it is a potentially hazardous object. Experts predicted a series of eight potential Earth impacts by Bennu between 2169 and 2199 with a cumulative 1-in-2,700 chance of impacting Earth between 2175 and 2199. If an impact were to occur, the expected kinetic energy associated with the collision would be 1,200 megatons. The next close pass by Bennu will be in September 2060.

In 2016, launched the Atlas 5 rocket that carried the satellite, Osiris-Rex (The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer), on its billion-dollar, seven-year, nine billion-mile round-trip voyage to the asteroid Bennu. It took the space probe two years to arrive at its destination, after which it spent two more years exploring and mapping the surface of the asteroid. 

Astronomical phenomena and the end-of-days

Astronomical phenomena could have much bigger implications for the earth-bound. Such an appearance was described in the Biblical prophecy of Balaam which hails the appearance of a new star as the precursor to Messiah.

I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh; there shall step forth a star out of Yakov, and a scepter shall rise out of Yisrael, and shall smite through the corners of Moab, and break down all the sons of Seth. Numbers 24:17

Rabbi Yosef Berger, the rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, cited Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known by the acronym Rambam, the foremost Torah authority of the 12th century, whose rulings are still used as the basis for much of Jewish law.

“The Rambam brings this verse about a star appearing as proof that the Messiah will come one day,” Rabbi Berger told Israel365 News, explaining that the Zohar, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism predicts, in detail, the color and type of stars that will appear. 

“The Zohar states explicitly that the Messianic process will be accompanied by several stars appearing. The Zohar goes into great depth, describing how many stars, and which colors they will be,” Rabbi Berger explained.

“In our generation, we have seen the return of the Jews from the exile, the desert blooming, and many other prophecies coming to fruition. Some people can look at this and twist prophecies of the final geula (redemption) to fit their lies. This comet may be the Star of Jacob in which case we will see a scepter of the Children of Jacob rise up in Israel. This should be a cause for celebration of all believers of the Bible. But other people can twist this Star of Jacob to fit some other scenario that no Biblical prophet ever intended.”

“Those who accept the truth will rejoice when the Star of Jacob appears. Those who do not will be greatly dismayed at having been revealed as being from the spiritual descendants of Moab.”

Yuval Ovadia, whose videos on Nibiru have garnered hundreds of thousands of views does not believe that asteroids are the focus of the Zohar’s descriptions of the end of days. 

“The Star of Jacob is a star and not an asteroid,” Ovadia noted. “We are experiencing a wave of asteroids which are being pushed ahead of the Star of Jacob, what some people call Nibiru, like flotsam is pushed ahead of the prow of a great ship. The star is huge and will disrupt gravity, causing earthquakes and volcanoes. But the Zohar assures us it will not destroy the earth.”