{"id":365903,"date":"2026-04-06T06:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T06:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/365903\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T06:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T06:56:08","slug":"could-earth-be-struck-without-warning-nasa-warns-thousands-of-city-killer-asteroids-still-hidden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/365903\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Earth be struck without warning? Nasa warns thousands of \u2018city-killer\u2019 asteroids still hidden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why the hidden threat is &#8216;dangerous&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Experts say the real peril stems not from tiny rocks that burn up harmlessly in Earth\u2019s atmosphere, nor from the exceptionally large asteroids that scientists already track. <\/p>\n<p>Instead, it\u2019s the intermediate-sized behemoths \u2014 large enough to obliterate an entire metropolitan area.<\/p>\n<p>Many of them remain largely invisible, quietly orbiting and eluding detection until it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013, the world was reminded of this danger when a house-sized asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, with the force of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of TNT. <\/p>\n<p>The blast injured more than 1,600 people, broke windows, and sent shockwaves across the region \u2014 and it arrived without any prior warning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why the hidden threat is &#8216;dangerous&#8217; Experts say the real peril stems not from tiny rocks that burn&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-365903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}