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'Major threat': Over 126 million people could be a risk if Anopheles stephensi spreads widely in Africa, research has shown

New evidence has emerged that an invasive species of malaria-carrying mosquito from Asia is spreading in Africa, where it could pose a “unique” threat to tens of millions of city-dwellers, researchers warned Tuesday.

In Africa, home to more than 95 percent of the world’s 627,000 malaria deaths in 2020, the parasite is mostly spread in rural areas preferred by the dominant Anopheles gambiae group of mosquitoes.

However the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, which has long been a main malaria spreader in Indian and Iranian cities, can breed in urban water supplies, meaning it can thrive during the dry season. It is also to resistant to commonly used insecticides.

Modelling research in 2020 found that if Anopheles stephensi spread widely in Africa it would put more than 126 million people in 44 cities at risk of malaria. 

Djibouti became the first African nation to detect Anopheles stephensi in 2012. It had been close to eradicating malaria with just 27 reported cases that year. 

However the number has skyrocketed since Anopheles stephensi’s arrival, hitting 73,000 cases in 2020, according to the World Health Organization.

On Tuesday, researchers revealed the first evidence that a malaria outbreak in neighbouring Ethiopia earlier this year was caused by Anopheles stephensi.

In the eastern Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa, a transport hub between the capital Addis Ababa and Djibouti, 205 malaria cases were reported in all of 2019.

However this year more than 2,400 cases were reported between January and May. The outbreak was unprecedented because it took place during the country’s dry season, when malaria has usually been rare.

– ‘Surprising’ –

As the numbers were rising, Fitsum Girma Tadesse, a molecular biologist at Ethiopia’s Armauer Hansen Research Institute, and other researchers “jumped in to investigate,” he told AFP.

They quickly determined that “Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes are responsible for the increase in cases,” Tadesse said.

They linked Anopheles stephensi to the infections of the patients, and also found the mosquitoes — carrying malaria — in nearby water containers.

Tadesse warned that the mosquito’s preference for open water tanks, common across many African cities, “makes it unique”.

The research, which has not been peer reviewed, was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene being held this week in Seattle, US.

Also presented at the conference were early findings that identified Anopheles stephensi at 64 percent of 60 test sites in nine states of neighbouring Sudan.

“In some instances, we have found that up to 94 percent of households have stephensi” mosquitoes nearby, Hmooda Kafy, the head of the integrated vector management department at Sudan’s health ministry, said in a statement.

The findings come after the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research confirmed in July it had detected Anopheles stephensi in West Africa for the first time.

Sarah Zohdy, an Anopheles stephensi specialist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told AFP it was “surprising” that the mosquito was detected so far west, as the focus had been on the Horn of Africa.

– ‘A major threat’ – 

In the last couple of months it has been shown that Anopheles stephensi “is no longer a potential threat” in Africa, Zohdy said.

“In the Ethiopian context, this is a threat — we now have data to show that,” said Zohdy, who also works with the US President’s Malaria Initiative, a partner of the Dire Dawa study.

“The evidence now exists to suggest that this is something that the world needs to act on,” she added.

Anopheles stephensi has also been reportedly detected in Somalia, according to the WHO, which in September launched an initiative aimed at stopping the spread of the mosquito in Africa.

Because Anopheles stephensi can thrive in urban water tanks, “you get a shift from a seasonal disease to one that can persist year round,” Zohdy said.

That shift poses “a major threat” to recent gains made against malaria, she added. 

Deaths from malaria had more than halved from the start of the century to 2017 — largely due to insecticide-treated mosquito nets, testing and drugs — before progress stalled during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Zohdy called for increased surveillance to find out exactly how far Anopheles stephensi has spread across the continent.

“The true extent of the distribution of the mosquito is unknown,” she said.

A medical employee walks in a corridor of a Monkeypox vaccination site in Paris in August 2022

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that its emergency committee had determined that monkeypox should continue to be classified as a global health emergency.

Following a meeting on October 20 about the virus that suddenly started spreading across the world in May, the experts “held the consensus view that the event continues to meet the … criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” WHO said in a statement.

The UN health agency first declared the so-called PHEIC — its highest level of alarm — on July 23, and the experts said that while some progress had been made in reining in the disease, it was too soon to declare the emergency over.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had accepted and agreed with the experts’ advice, the statement said.

Since monkeypox suddenly began spreading beyond the West African countries where it has long been endemic six months ago, it has killed 36 people out of more than 77,000 cases across 109 countries, according to a WHO count. 

The outbreak outside of West Africa has primarily affected young men who have sex with men.

But since peaking in July, the number of people infected with the disease that causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions, has consistently fallen, particularly in Europe and North America, the hardest hit areas in the early stages of the global outbreak. 

The number of new global cases fell by 41 percent in the seven days up to Monday compared to the previous week, the WHO said.

But WHO’s emergency committee stressed that there were a number of lingering causes for concern.

They listed ongoing transmission in some regions, continuing preparedness and response inequity within and between countries, and the potential for greater health impacts if the virus begins spreading more among more vulnerable populations.

They also pointed to the continuing risk of stigma and discrimination, weak health systems in some developing countries leading to under-reporting and the lack of equitable access to diagnostics, antivirals and vaccines.

The nine-metre-wide coil weighs 200 tonnes and has been tightly wrapped to withstand a two-week trip to Marseille, southern France

Russia on Tuesday dispatched one of six giant magnets needed for the ITER nuclear fusion programme in France, one of the last international scientific projects Moscow participates in despite the Ukraine conflict. 

The ship carrying the Russian-made magnet — or “poloidal field coil” — departed Saint Petersburg on Tuesday under grey skies.

On board, the massive nine-metre-wide coil, which weighs 200 tonnes had been tightly wrapped to withstand a two-week trip to Marseille, southern France. 

The ring-shaped magnet built under Russian atomic agency Rosatom’s supervision will make up the top part of the world’s largest “tokamak”.

The tokamak is a magnetic fusion device built in France following the same principle that powers our sun and stars.

The Russian piece was meant to leave in May but sanctions forbidding Russian ships docking in Europe delayed the departure. 

Still, the “current situation did not change the fact that we will fullfil our obligations”, Rosatom representative for international projects Viacheslav Perchukov said.

Geopolitical tensions “practically did not affect the realisation of this project”, Perchukov said.  

“Without (the Russian coil), the tokamak will not work,” senior ITER centre scientist Leonid Khimchenko told AFP.

He hailed a “unique” achievement, over eight years in the making. 

In southern France, 35 nations are collaborating to build the largest nuclear fusion device in the world. 

“This is such an interesting project that in fact we are all one family… there is no competition between us, nothing,” Khimchenko said.

The project was set in motion after a 1985 summit between US President Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Andrey Mednikov, a scientist in charge of the production of the poloidal field coil, praised the continuing international cooperation. 

“If this cooperation was brought to a halt,” Mednikov said, “everyone would lose: both Russia and the international community.”

The researchers attach a tag to the back of a blue whale off the coast of California

Blue whales consume up to 10 million pieces of microplastic every day, research estimated Tuesday, suggesting that the omnipresent pollution poses a bigger danger to the world’s largest animal than previously thought.

The tiny fragments of plastic have been found everywhere from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains, and even inside human organs and blood.

Now a modelling study published in the journal Nature Communications has estimated how much is being ingested by whales. 

A US-led research team put tags on 191 blue, fin and humpback whales that live off the coast of California to observe their movements.

“It’s basically like an Apple Watch, just on the back of a whale,” said Shirel Kahane-Rapport, a researcher at California State University, Fullerton and the study’s first author.

The whales mostly fed at depths of between 50 to 250 metres (165-820 feet), which is home to the “greatest concentration of microplastics in the water column,” Kahane-Rapport told AFP.

The researchers then estimated the size and number of mouthfuls the whales had daily and what was filtered out, modelling three different scenarios.

Under the most likely scenario, the blue whales ate up to 10 million microplastic pieces a day.

Over the 90-120 day annual feeding season, that represents more than a billion pieces a year.

The largest animal ever to live on Earth is also likely the biggest microplastic consumer, eating up to 43.6 kilogrammes a day, the study said.

“Imagine carrying around an extra 45 kilogrammes — yes, you’re a very big whale, but that will take up space,” Kahane-Rapport said.

Humpback whales were estimated to eat around four million pieces a day.

While it is easy to imagine whales sucking in vast amounts of microplastics as they gulp their way through the ocean, the researchers found that was not the case.

Instead, 99 percent of the microplastics entered the whales because they were already inside their prey.

“That’s concerning for us,” Kahane-Rapport said, because humans eat that prey.

“We also eat anchovies and sardines,” she said, adding that “krill is the basis of the food web”.

Previous research has shown that if krill are in a tank with microplastic, “they will eat it,” Kahane-Rapport said.

Now that the researchers know how much microplastic is being consumed by whales, next they aim to determine how much harm it could be doing.

“The dose defines the poison,” Kahane-Rapport said.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro walks through the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia after losing his re-election bid

Brazilian police on Tuesday fired teargas at protesters who blocked major highways for a second day over the election loss of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede defeat.

Thirty-six hours after official results showed he had lost Sunday’s presidential run-off with only 1.8 percentage points, Bolsonaro has yet to speak, fanning concerns he may try and challenge the result after months of attacking the electoral system as fraudulent.

In Novo Hamburgo, near the southern city of Porto Alegre, police fired teargas to break up a protest, according to an AFP photographer. 

The executive director of the Federal Highway Police (PRF), Marco Antonio Territo de Barros, told a press conference in the capital Brasilia that there were 267 road blockages underway across the country and that 306 had already been dispersed since Sunday.

“It’s a complex operation, involving more than 75,000 kilometres (46,500 miles) of federal highways,” he said.

Protesters wearing the yellow and green of the Brazilian flag, which the outgoing president has adopted as his own, expressed unhappiness with the outcome of the election.

“We will not accept losing what we have gained, we want what is written on our flag, ‘order and progress.’ We will not accept the situation as it is,” Antoniel Almeida, 45, told AFP at a protest in Barra Mansa, Rio de Janeiro.

In Sao Paulo, protester Jeremias Costa said he was “waiting anxiously” for Bolsonaro to appear “for Brazil, for democracy.”

On Monday night, Judge Alexander de Moraes of the Supreme Court ordered police to disperse the blockades immediately. He was acting in response to a request by a transport federation that complained it was losing business.

– Lula gets to work –

The mounting tension follows a dirty and divisive election campaign between the hardline conservative Bolsonaro and his nemesis Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who returns to office in a dramatic comeback.

Brazil’s president between 2003 and 2010, Lula crashed into disgrace in a corruption scandal that landed him in jail before his conviction was thrown out due to bias from the lead judge. However, he was not exonerated.

The election outcome showed just how polarized the country is between the two very different leaders.

Lula scored 50.9 percent to Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent — the narrowest margin in Brazil’s modern history.

With a massive to-do list, Lula leaped into action, meeting Argentine President Alberto Fernandez in Sao Paulo and holding a series of phone calls with US President Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and others.

However, Bolsonaro’s silence after months of alleging fraud in the electoral system and a conspiracy against him had the country on a knife edge.

“Anyplace else in the world, the defeated president would have called me to recognize his defeat,” Lula said in his victory speech to a euphoric sea of red-clad supporters in Sao Paulo on Sunday night.

There are fears Bolsonaro, 67, could attempt a Brazilian version of the US Capitol riots, which rocked that country after his political role model, former US president Donald Trump, refused to accept his election defeat in 2020.

But the Brazilian leader may find himself isolated.

Some key Bolsonaro allies have publicly recognized his loss, including the powerful speaker of the lower house of Congress, Arthur Lira.

And international congratulations for Lula poured in from the United States, China, India, France, Britain, South Africa and numerous others.

– Immense challenges –

Lula acknowledged the “immense” challenges facing his government when he is sworn in on January 1, citing a hunger crisis, the economy, bitter political division and deforestation in the Amazon.

He is likely to face a hostile Congress packed with allies of Bolsonaro.

“Lula will have to show a lot of political skill to pacify the country,” said political scientist Leandro Consentino of Insper university in Sao Paulo.

Bolsonaro became the first incumbent president in Brazil not to win re-election in the post-dictatorship era after a four-year term in which he came under fire for his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which left more than 680,000 dead in Brazil.

He also drew criticism for his vitriolic comments, polarizing style and attacks on democratic institutions and foreign allies.

Lula’s victory has been hailed by environmentalists and governments hoping he will make halting Amazon destruction a key priority.

The report sounded the alarm on the scale of land needed for countries' climate plans

The world needs to set aside an area bigger than the United States for tree planting and other measures to meet climate pledges, according to research published Tuesday that warned against “unrealistic” carbon-cutting plans.

Almost 200 nations will begin high-stakes UN climate talks in Egypt from November 6, as increasing damage from floods, heat waves and droughts are being felt across the world.

Recent UN assessments conclude that current policies and plans are not nearly enough to limit global warming and avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

They may also be unattainable, new research showed Tuesday on the planned use of land-based schemes such as tree planting to offset fossil fuel pollution.

An assessment of plans from 166 countries and the European Union, released by the University of Melbourne, estimated that the total area implied was almost 1.2 billion hectares (2.9 billion acres) — bigger than the United States, or four times the size of India.

“Servicing all of the land-based carbon removal pledges is unrealistic because it would require a land mass half the size of current global cropland, putting potential pressure on ecosystems, food security and indigenous peoples’ rights,” the report said.

The research looked at countries’ targets, particularly longer-term commitments, and if the land needed was not explicitly stated, they calculated using information about the types of activity as well as carbon removal data from UN climate experts.

They found that while over 550 hectares were earmarked for restoring degraded land and protecting primary forests, some 630 million hectares were estimated for carbon capture schemes, like tree planting.

“Land-based carbon removals have to be considered together with deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions, not as a replacement,” said Anne Larson, of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, who was a co-author of the report.

– ‘Dangerous overreliance’ –

Larson said governments might see tree planting as “easy, compared to other options”, but cautioned that these projects can cause their own problems. 

If there is no long-term management plan or if the species are not native, the trees can simply wither.

Tree plantations imposed on communities risk being “neglected, burned, cut down”, she said. 

Such expansion is also seen as incompatible with the rights of many indigenous peoples, who are increasingly being recognised as crucial custodians of nature, as the world faces a human-caused extinction crisis as well as climate change.

The Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, representing 35 million people living in forest territories in Asia, Africa and Latin America, on Tuesday said: “dangerous overreliance on land-based methods to capture carbon would gobble up much of our ancestral lands, which we desperately need for food production and nature protection”.

“Simply put, we cannot plant trees to escape climate disaster, there is not enough land. Instead, we need to protect and restore existing forests and you can only do that with us,” the alliance said.

UN climate scientists have said the world needs to slash carbon emissions 45 percent by 2030 in order to limit global heating to the more ambitious Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Melbourne University report said any tree planting schemes would be simply unable to meet the urgent challenge of reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

“Countries need to reduce their expected reliance on land-based carbon removal in favour of stepping up emissions reductions from all sectors and prioritising ecosystem-based approaches,” the report said.

The report sounded the alarm on the scale of land needed for countries' climate plans

The world needs to set aside an area bigger than the United States for tree planting and other measures to meet climate pledges, according to research published Tuesday that warned against “unrealistic” carbon-cutting plans.

Almost 200 nations will begin high-stakes UN climate talks in Egypt from November 6, as increasing damage from floods, heat waves and droughts are being felt across the world.

Recent UN assessments conclude that current policies and plans are not nearly enough to limit global warming and avoid catastrophic climate impacts.

They may also be unattainable, new research showed Tuesday on the planned use of land-based schemes such as tree planting to offset fossil fuel pollution.

An assessment of plans from 166 countries and the European Union, released by the University of Melbourne, estimated that the total area implied was almost 1.2 billion hectares (2.9 billion acres) — bigger than the United States, or four times the size of India.

“Servicing all of the land-based carbon removal pledges is unrealistic because it would require a land mass half the size of current global cropland, putting potential pressure on ecosystems, food security and indigenous peoples’ rights,” the report said.

The research looked at countries’ targets, particularly longer-term commitments, and if the land needed was not explicitly stated, they calculated using information about the types of activity as well as carbon removal data from UN climate experts.

They found that while over 550 hectares were earmarked for restoring degraded land and protecting primary forests, some 630 million hectares were estimated for carbon capture schemes, like tree planting.

“Land-based carbon removals have to be considered together with deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions, not as a replacement,” said Anne Larson, of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, who was a co-author of the report.

Larson said governments might see tree planting as “easy, compared to other options”, but cautioned that these projects can cause their own problems. 

If there is no long-term management plan or if the species are not native, the trees can simply wither.

Tree plantations imposed on communities risk being “neglected, burned, cut down”, she said. 

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro walks through the Alvorada Palace in Brasilia after losing his re-election bid

Supporters of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro blocked major highways for a second day as tensions mounted over his silence after narrowly losing re-election to bitter rival Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Thirty-six hours after official results showed he had lost Sunday’s presidential run-off with only 1.8 percentage points, Bolsonaro has yet to concede defeat, fanning concerns he may try and challenge the result after months of attacking the electoral system as fraudulent.

Federal Highway Police (PRF) on Tuesday reported more than 250 total or partial road blockages in at least 23 states by Bolsonaro supporters, while local media said protests outside the country’s main international airport in Sao Paulo delayed passengers and led to several flights being cancelled.

Protesters wearing the yellow and green of the Brazilian flag — which the outgoing president has adopted as his own — said they would not accept the outcome of the election.

“We will not accept losing what we have gained, we want what is written on our flag, ‘order and progress’. We will not accept the situation as it is,” Antoniel Almeida, 45, told AFP at a protest in Barra Mansa, Rio de Janeiro.

On Monday night Judge Alexander de Moraes of the Supreme Court ordered police to disperse the blockades immediately. He was acting in response to a request by a transport federation that complained it was losing business.

– Lula gets to work –

The mounting tension follows a dirty and divisive election campaign between the hardline conservative Bolsonaro and his nemesis Lula, who returns to office in a dramatic comeback.

Brazil’s president between 2003 and 2010, Lula crashed into disgrace in a corruption scandal that landed him in jail before his conviction was thrown out due to bias from the lead judge. However, he was not exonerated.

The election outcome showed just how polarized the country is between the two very different leaders.

Lula scored 50.9 percent to Bolsonaro’s 49.1 percent — the narrowest margin in Brazil’s modern history.

With a massive to-do list, Lula leaped into action, meeting Argentine President Alberto Fernandez in Sao Paulo and holding a series of phone calls with US President Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and others.

However Bolsonaro’s silence after months of alleging fraud in the electoral system and a conspiracy against him had the country on a knife-edge.

“Anyplace else in the world, the defeated president would have called me to recognize his defeat,” Lula said in his victory speech to a euphoric sea of red-clad supporters in Sao Paulo on Sunday night.

There are fears Bolsonaro, 67, could attempt a Brazilian version of the US Capitol riots which rocked that country after his political role model, former US president Donald Trump, refused to accept his election defeat in 2020.

But the Brazilian leader may find himself isolated.

Some key Bolsonaro allies have publicly recognized his loss, including the powerful speaker of the lower house of Congress, Arthur Lira.

And international congratulations for Lula poured in from the US, China, India, France, Britain, South Africa and numerous others.

– Immense challenges –

Lula acknowledged the “immense” challenges facing his government when he is sworn in on January 1, citing a hunger crisis, the economy, bitter political division, and deforestation in the Amazon.

He is likely to face a hostile Congress packed with allies of Bolsonaro.

“Lula will have to show a lot of political skill to pacify the country,” said political scientist Leandro Consentino of Insper university in Sao Paulo.

Bolsonaro became the first incumbent president in Brazil not to win re-election in the post-dictatorship era after a four-year term in which he came under fire for his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which left more than 680,000 dead in Brazil.

He also drew criticism for his vitriolic comments, polarizing style and attacks on democratic institutions and foreign allies.

Lula’s victory has been hailed by environmentalists and governments hoping he will make halting Amazon destruction a key priority.

The European Union’s leadership voiced hope Lula’s win would lead to ratification of a trade deal with South American bloc Mercosur, long stalled over concerns about rampant deforestation under Bolsonaro.

Norway announced it would resume paying nearly $500 million in aid for protecting the world’s biggest rainforest, which it halted in 2019 over.

A file photo from July 1946 shows the mushroom cloud following nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands

Marshall Islands officials say they are ready to resume talks with the United States this week on renewing a long-standing economic and security deal, provided Washington addresses grievances stemming from the testing of nuclear weapons on the Pacific archipelago more than 70 years ago. 

The United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands between 1946-58, and the health and environmental impacts are still felt on the islands and atolls that lie between Hawaii and the Philippines.

US special envoy Joseph Yun is scheduled to land in the capital Majuro on Thursday to resume negotiations on extending the 20-year Compact of Free Association, part of which expires in 2023.

Marshall Islands negotiators first want the United States to pay more of the compensation awarded by the international Nuclear Claims Tribunal, totalling just over $3 billion, of which around $270 million has been paid so far.

Officials in Majuro broke off talks in September to renew the compact, a key international agreement between the United States, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

The Marshall Islands said it would also be ready to resume talks with Yun if Washington tackled health and environmental issues stemming from their nuclear testing.

“We are ready to sign (a Compact extension) tomorrow, once the key issues are addressed,” Parliament Speaker Kenneth Kedi told AFP.

“We need to come up with a dignified solution,” he said. Kedi represents Rongelap Atoll, which is still affected by nuclear testing.

He was encouraged by an agreement signed in late September by US President Joe Biden and Pacific island leaders, including Marshall Islands President David Kabua, that included references to the US commitment to addressing its nuclear past.

However, until that happens, “it casts a question mark on all the promises Washington has made,” Kedi said.

“If we can’t resolve issues from our past, how will it be going forward with other issues?”

Thousands of Marshall Islanders were engulfed in a radioactive fallout cloud following the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test by the US military, and many subsequently experienced health problems.

Tonnes of contaminated debris from the testing was dumped in a crater on the Enewetak Atoll and capped with concrete that has since cracked, sparking health concerns.

Hundreds of islanders from the Marshall’s Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrik atolls have also had to relocate due to nuclear contamination. Many are still unable to return home.

A study issued by the US National Cancer Institute in 2004 estimated around 530 cancer cases had been caused by the nuclear testing.

“As Bikinians, we’ve done enough for the United States,” said Alson Kelen, chairman of the Marshall Islands’ National Nuclear Commission, who believes the United States should pay the full amount of the compensation awarded.

“We’re not asking to be rich. We’re asking for funding to solve our nuclear problems … really the funds are to mitigate and address the problems of our health, relocations and nuclear cleanups,” Kelen said.

Three near-Earth asteroids — one potentially hazardous — were found using a high-tech instrument at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile

An international team of astronomers on Monday announced the discovery of a large asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Earth, creating a small chance far in the future of a catastrophic collision.

The 1.5 kilometer- (0.9 mile-) wide asteroid, named 2022 AP7, was discovered in area notoriously difficult to spot objects due to the glare from the Sun.

It was found along with two other near-Earth asteroids using a high-tech instrument on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile that was originally developed to study dark matter.

“2022 AP7 crosses Earth’s orbit, which makes it a potentially hazardous asteroid, but it currently does not now or anytime in the future have a trajectory that will have it collide with the Earth,” said lead author of the findings, astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The potential threat comes from the fact that like any orbiting object, its trajectory will be slowly modified due to myriad gravitational forces, notably by planets. Forecasts are therefore difficult on the very long term.

The newly-discovered asteroid is “the largest object that is potentially hazardous to Earth to be discovered in the last eight years,” said NOIRLab, a US-funded research group that operates multiple observatories.

2022 AP7 takes five years to circle the Sun under its current orbit, which at its closest point to Earth remain several million kilometers away.

The risk is therefore very small, but in case of a collision, an asteroid of that size “would have a devastating impact on life as we know it,” said Sheppard. He explained that dust launched into the air would have a major cooling effect, provoking an “extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years.”

His team’s results were published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal. The two other asteroids pose no risk to Earth, but one is the closest asteroid to the Sun ever found.

Some 30,000 asteroids of all sizes — including more than 850 larger than a kilometer wide — have been catalogued in the vicinity of the Earth, earning them the label “Near Earth Objects” (NEOs). None of them threaten Earth for the next 100 years.

According to Sheppard, there are “likely 20 to 50 large NEOs left to find,” but most are on orbits that put them in the Sun’s glare.

In preparation for a future discovery of a more threatening object, NASA conducted a test mission in late September in which it collided a spacecraft with an asteroid, proving that it was possible to change its trajectory.