CapitalistImperialistPig

Save the date, March 16, 2880. That's when asteroid 1950 DA is scheduled to make a very close approach to Earth, with a 0.3 % estimated chance of impact. It's a big rascal, with a 1 km diameter, so that would be bad. The date of Earth's potential destruction has been set at 16 March 2880, when an asteroid hurtling through space has a possibility of striking our planet. Researchers studying the rock found that its body rotates so quickly that it should break apart, but somehow remains intact on its Earth-bound trajectory. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2726039/Impossible-asteroid-hurtling-Earth-defying-laws-physics-experts-dont-know-stop-it.html#ixzz3AW65Aztm Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook Breaking apart would probably be bad, increasing the sum of the collision cross sections of the fragments.

And there is a chance one might kill you! An extremely unlikely chance, says Mike Brown. About 1 in 74 million, meaning that there are 73,999,999 other ways that are equally likely to knock you off. Of course the occasional biggie can flatten a city or even a continent, but Brown says we know there aren't any of the continent smashers headed our way for at least several hundred years. Consequently, there is no urgency whatsoever to rush to build a zillion dollar asteroid defense system. We should continue to study asteroids, mainly for other reasons, but just monitor the situation. If one is headed here in 500 years, we can hope that our descendants will be a lot better prepared to deal with it then. Comets are another problem. Partly because they are moving much faster, so they have a lot more kinetic energy. Mostly, though, the problem is that we won't have, can't have, much warning. A year or two at most. Consequently, our prospects for doing anything about a...