Unknown Country has been keeping a keen eye on the skies just recently, and with good cause: following the revelation last week that the Earth had narrowly escaped serious damage from 26 very sizeable asteroids over the past few years, another lucky escape was reported over the weekend.
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The risk of a sizeable asteroid colliding with the earth has always been purported to be extremely low, with scientists reporting that such an event was only likely to occur every twenty million years or so.
Unfortunately, our collective sigh of relief could be a little premature, as recent evidence suggests that, not only is the risk much higher than previously thought, but that such events are occurring regularly in our atmosphere. The new information has been released by an organisation known as the B612 foundation, a private collective whose mission is to detect and deflect dangerous asteroids.
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Astronomers are warning us that asteroid 2014 DX110 is on target to hurtle between the Earth and the Moon on Wednesday, passing close to our planet at a distance of just 217,000 miles (350,000km).
At 98ft (30m), 2014 DX110 is a relatively large object belonging to the Apollo class asteroid group, a class of Earth-crossing objects that pose a potential threat of impact. Scientists are currently aware of 240 Apollo asteroids, but it is thought that there could be at least 2000 Earth-crossers with diameters of 1 km or larger. If one of these giants hit Earth, it could carve out a crater about 10-20 times its own size.
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In the last few hours, a "Deep Impact" style scenario has unfolded in space as a huge asteroid grazed past Earth last night at 27,000mph.
The asteroid passed within 2 million miles of Earth, not exactly a "near miss" but close enough to make scientists sit up and track its progress with more than a passing interest.
The asteroid, known as 2000 EM26, was a chunk of space rock of around 885 feet (270m)in diameter, and was discovered on March 5th 2000.
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