The World Did Not End Last Night

Asteroid TU24

Just in case you were wondering, an asteroid did not crash into the Earth last night and the world did not end.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 came near to the Earth - that is, about 1.5 times as far from the Earth as the moon is, which in terms of astronomical distances is “near” but in terms of catastrophic collisions is “a complete miss”. Some doomsayers were predicting that TU24 was going to go all Hulk on our asses and smash the planet, but astronomers were comfortable for, oh, ever since they started talking about it coming near the Earth, that it wouldn’t hit the planet.

It is possible to calculate these things, you know.

On the off chance that there may still be two or three people out there who aren’t convinced it won’t hit us… there’s probably nothing I can say to convince you that it already didn’t. Perhaps you would enjoy “Deep Impact”? I know that I’d prefer Morgan Freeman as President.

Now on to more pressing things, like bird flu and “I Am Legend”…

Via: spacetoday.net: Asteroid passes near Earth
[tags]tu24, asteroid, impact[/tags]

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