The universe is full of things that can kill us, but the most unsettling threats are the ones we can’t see. Astronomers say there may be hundreds of asteroids hiding near Venus that are all but invisible from Earth—objects big enough to cause city-level destruction if they ever stray into our path.

A new study led by Valerio Carruba of São Paulo State University warns that these Venus “co-orbital” asteroids are practically blind spots. “Our study shows that there’s a population of potentially dangerous asteroids that we can’t detect with current telescopes,” Carruba explained in a release. These rocks orbit the Sun on the same path as Venus, sometimes ahead of the planet, sometimes behind, and occasionally cutting across its track in tangled motions.

So far, astronomers have identified a

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