Have you ever had a dream where you are falling from a high-rise building? The kind where the drop happens so fast you cannot scream for help, and just when you are sure you will hit the ground and die, you wake up suddenly. The speed is terrifying, unpredictable, and completely out of your control.

That same feeling describes what astronomers recently discovered in space.
Scientists spotted a rock, not tiny, but about half a mile wide, spinning so fast that it completes one full turn in less than two minutes. Just like the dream, the motion is rapid, unexpected, and intense. Before anyone could fully process it, the asteroid had already finished another spin.
This unusual space rock, named 2025 MN45, was discovered by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. What makes it remarkable is not just its size, but how incredibly fast it rotates. Most large asteroids take tens of minutes or even hours to complete one rotation. This one finishes a full spin in about 112 seconds faster than a Ferris wheel at a funfair.

Because of this extreme speed, scientists believe the asteroid must be made of solid, strong rock, rather than loosely packed rubble. If it were fragile, the force of the spin would tear it apart. Its ability to stay intact tells researchers something important about how asteroids are formed and what they are made of.

This discovery is also one of the first major findings from the Rubin Observatory’s new and powerful telescope camera, a tool designed to scan the sky in great detail and detect objects moving through space.
In simple terms, this giant spinning rock surprised scientists and in doing so, helped them learn more about how asteroids are put together and how they behave in space. Sometimes, the universe moves just as fast and unexpectedly as the dreams that wake us up in the middle of the night.