You are not going to die.
A NASA diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 past the Earth on February 15, 2013. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Fear of death is, of course, the most exciting thing about asteroids. But the asteroid known as 2012 DA is not going to hit the Earth tomorrow. Oh, it will pass close—about 17,150 miles away at 2:25PM EST, closer than many of our communications satellites—but the odds of a collision are zero. Zilch. Nada. (As my friend Phil Plait has just pointed out, we also are not going to be hit by a different asteroid in 2106.) We know the orbit of 2012 DA very precisely, so this is one of life's rare sure things. ** But see update below. While we are contemplating death, though, just for fun let’s think for a moment about what it would be like if 2012 DA did hit. ...
