Most of us were blissfully unaware, but a huge asteroid the size of a double-decker bus has careered past the Earth.
The space rock flew within 300,000km of the planet after being spotted by astronomers a few days before. While the distance from the pant might seem daily big, the asteroid in fact passed within the Moon's orbit, which orbits the planet from about 384,400km away.
The rock was spotted by stargazers at the Mount Lemmon Survey team, according to an alert by Minor Planet Center, part of the International Astronomical Union.
Researchers around the world keep a constant look out for an potentially dangerous rocks that might hit Earth, but an alarmingly small number have been identified.
Ex-Astronaut Ed Lu recently told Wired.com, "While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially-operated observatories.
"Because we don't know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid has been blind luck."
WENN.com
source: newshub archive
