Two huge “potentially dangerous asteroids” are expected to pass through Earth’s neighborhood later this week.

Both are classified as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) by the Center for Near-Earth Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

NEOs are classified as any object that approaches within about 120 million miles of the Sun or 30 million miles of Earth, while a PHA is classified as objects at least 460 feet in diameter that approach within approximately 4.6 of the Sun Millions of miles approaching.

The asteroids named 447755 (2007 JX2) and (2020 XR) are each estimated to be the size of the Empire State Building.

According to NASA’s own JPL, they are expected to be 1,300 feet and 1,200 feet in diameter, respectively.

However, CNEOS estimates that 447755 (2007 JX2) could measure between 984 feet and 2,198 feet and that 2020 XR may have a diameter between 951 feet and 2,133 feet.

For comparison, the Empire State Building is about 1,250 feet tall, the Eiffel Tower is about 1,060 feet tall, and One World Trade Center towers over both at 1,776 feet.

The asteroids are scheduled to rise near our planet on December 3 and 4, respectively, with 447755 (2007 JX2) passing at a distance of 3,440,000 miles and (2020 XR) at a distance of 1,370,000 miles.

For perspective, the Moon orbits our planet at a distance of 238,900 miles, while our closest planetary companion, Venus, is about 24 million miles away at its closest point.

“A potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is an asteroid whose orbit intersects Earth’s orbit around the Sun by less than 0.05 astronomical units (1 AU is the distance to the Sun), which is just over 4.5 million miles “Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space sciences at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said previously Newsweek.

“It must also have an absolute magnitude of 22.0 or less (lower values ​​of magnitude are brighter = larger objects), an asteroid (or comet) that would cause significant regional damage if it impacted Earth,” Barstow added added. “Not all NEOs are potentially dangerous, but all dangerous objects are NEOs.”

NASA is tracking around 36,000 NEOs and around 2,350 PHAs.

Both 447755 (2007 JX2) and (2020 XR) were formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Jupiter’s enormous gravity can disrupt the orbits of nearby asteroids, causing an asteroid to be pulled out of the belt and onto a trajectory that crosses Earth’s orbit. Additionally, collisions between asteroids could propel an asteroid out of the belt and possibly toward the inner solar system.

Fortunately, despite their scary-sounding PHA classification, none of these asteroids pose a real threat to our planet. NASA keeps an eye on any large asteroids that come remotely close to our planet to make sure they stay out of our way as much as possible.

“The more we observe (asteroids), the better our calculations are for predicting future close approaches,” said Gretchen Benedix, an astrogeologist at Australia’s Curtin University Newsweek.

If an asteroid the size of these two visitors ever collided with our planet, we would be in for a very bad time indeed.

“An asteroid 100 to 200 meters (330 to 650 feet) in diameter would cause a regional catastrophe that would wipe out a small country but would have resulting global consequences for the world economy and globalization,” said Jay Tate, director of the Spaceguard Center Observatory in the United Kingdom, previously told Newsweek.

This week, three more smaller asteroids are passing through our planet. The house-sized 2024 WN4 and the bus-sized 2021

Do you have a tip for a science story? Newsweek should cover? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know at [email protected].