Half-mile-wide Asteroid To Fly Past Earth Today

A really big asteroid is about to fly past Earth today - but don’t worry, it's perfectly safe.

Despite reports from the usual internet doom-mongers, asteroid FN-53 isn’t going to blast a six-mile wide hole into the Earth’s crust, nor is it going to wipe out 1.5 billion people.

Instead, NASA predicts, the rock - which could be up to two-thirds of a mile wide - will fly past at a safe distance.

Dr David Weintraub of Vanderbilt University told Red Orbit, ‘I’ve been contacted by folks who want to know about the ‘really big’ asteroid that is going to come ‘real close’ to Earth on Thursday.

                               [ Surgeon Plans First Human Head Transplant ]

          [ Robotic Chef Can Cook Michelin Star Food In Your Kitchen By Mimicking World's Best Cooks ]

‘Yes, the asteroid identified by NASA as Near-Earth Asteroid 1999 FN53 is a relatively big one, measuring half a kilometer to one-kilometer in diameter. And yes, if 1999 FN93 were to hit the Earth at a collision speed of about 15 kilometers per second, which is this object’s speed relative to Earth, it would make a big hole, a crater probably 10 kilometers across and 10 kilometers deep, which is big enough to vaporize any major city on Earth and melt most of that city’s suburbs.

‘But no, that’s not going to happen, despite the hysteria drummed up on a few websites around the world this week.

‘1999 FN53 is one of the bigger asteroids that NASA identifies in its lists of near-Earth asteroids, but at least this time around the closest approach of 1999 FN53 to Earth will be more than 26 times more distant than the Moon.

‘On the scale of the solar system, that’s a close approach, putting this asteroid within 7% of the distance of the Earth to the Sun. But 10 million kilometers gives us plenty of breathing space, for now.'‘

Click on the UFO's electrical field for videos of UFOs & close encounters...