That Killer Asteroid You Heard About Yesterday? We Knew About It Last Year

Beware death from above! So blared science headlines yesterday. Citing a study in the Journal Icarus that said a huge asteroid perhaps could have a 1 in 1,000 shot of striking earth late in the next century, stories broke such as, "Will a Giant Asteroid Kill Us All in 2182?" "Asteroid Could Destroy Human Life on Earth by 2200" "Huge asteroid on possible collision course with Earth (172 years from now)" "Mark your calendars: Potentially hazardous asteroid might collide with Earth in 2182" They're correct in that there's a giant asteroid out there called 1999 RQ36, and there's a small chance it might hit us in a just less than couple hundred years. There's just one problem: It isn't news, though you wouldn't have gotten that from the articles. The study everyone is referring to came out last year—it was in Icarus last October. Confused why there was a press release yesterday that blew up into this wave of coverage, I emailed study coauthor Maria Eugenia Sansaturio of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain to see if there was anything new to report about the asteroid. Her reply: