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Asteroid could wipe out a continent in 2019

Astronomers have found an asteroid that appears to be on a collision course with Earth.

It has been described as the most threatening object yet detected in space.

A preliminary orbit suggests that 2002 NT7 could strike the planet on February 1, 2019.

The BBC reports astronomers have given NT7 a threat rating on the Palermo technical scale of 0.06, making it the first object to be given a positive value.

Although they say it merits attention, they expect more observations to show it is not on an Earth-intersecting trajectory.

The asteroid is estimated to be about two kilometres wide, large enough to cause continent-wide devastation on Earth.

It was first seen on the night of July 5 by the Linear Observatory's automated sky survey programme in New Mexico.

Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, told BBC News Online: "This asteroid has now become the most threatening object in the short history of asteroid detection."

But he added: "This unique event should not diminish the fact that additional observations in coming weeks will almost certainly - we hope - eliminate the current threat."

Dr Donald Yeomans, from the US space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said: "The error in our knowledge of where NT7 will be on February 1, 2019, is large, several tens of millions of kilometres."

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