Naughty or Nice Takes on an Urgent Dimension

By , December 12, 2012 1:11 pm

A 60-second exposure of near-Earth asteroid 2012 XE54 streaking through the sky on Dec. 11, 2012, during a close flyby that brought it inside the moon's orbit. CREDIT: Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes, Remanzacco Observatory

A 60-second exposure of near-Earth asteroid 2012 XE54 streaking through the sky on Dec. 11, 2012, during a close flyby that brought it inside the moon’s orbit. CREDIT: Ernesto Guido & Nick Howes, Remanzacco Observatory

Hey, all you who doubt the after life and you who don’t, the news is that we all may have an opportunity to test our theories sooner than we think.

Scientists have discovered about 9,000 near-Earth asteroids to date, but perhaps a million or more such space rocks are thought to exist.

And some of them are potentially dangerous. Observations by NASA’s WISE space telescope suggest that about 4,700 asteroids at least 330 feet (100 m) wide come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits.

So far, researchers have spotted less than 30 percent of these large space rocks, which could obliterate an area the size of a state if they slammed into Earth.

But there are much bigger asteroids out there, such as 4179 Toutatis, a 3-mile-wide (5 km) behemoth that’s in the process of flying by Earth now. Toutatis will remain 4.3 million miles (7 million km) away during its closest approach Wednesday morning, but it may come closer on future passes.

Toutatis would inflict devastating damage if it slammed into Earth, perhaps extinguishing human civilization. The asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was about 6 miles (10 km) wide, researchers say.

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