Monday, August 12, 2013

Here Are The 1400 Potentially Earth-Ending Asteroids Circling Our Planet

There are more than 1,400 potentially dangerous asteroids orbiting alongside the Earth, and any one of them is big enough to end humanity.

Fortunately, NASA keeps an eye on them for us — and they've mapped them all out here in this image from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, made using data from the Near-Earth Orbits List:


To make this list an asteroid has to be "relatively large and close" — at least 460 feet in diameter, and within 4.7 million miles of us — to get NASA's attention. As you can see in the diagram, there are plenty of space rocks hurtling through the solar system that fit those criteria.

Read the full story by Robert Ferris at Business Insider

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