Did you feel something swoosh past your head Monday night? Well, you weren’t imagining things.
An asteroid that could pulverize a country zipped close by the Earth on Monday, only weeks after astronomers first noticed the big space boulder heading in our direction.
The Near Earth Object brightened enough for even simple telescopes to spot just before it raced past our planet on Monday, only two times the distance of the moon, according to spaceweather.com, a NASA-affiliated Web site.
Yeesh. I think most of us tend to dismiss such cataclysmic ends as being on the receiving end of an asteroid, but I think most such dismissal tends to be of the “If I think about this too much, I’ll be really frightened” variety.
On the lighter side, the story features a caption, “The space rock 2001 YB5, identified by the arrow, could have wiped out France, according to a scientist in Britain.” Yeah, I’ll bet that example was chosen at random.
(Via John Doe)