Asteroid Just Misses Earth

And we’re just hearing about this now?! Spotted in space two days ago, an asteroid whipped by Earth earlier this morning within 140,000 miles of our planet (about 60 percent of the distance between the Earth and moon). Though the rock was only 72-160 feet in diameter—a baby compared to the six-mile-wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and roughly half of life on earth 65 million years ago—a direct collision could have been disastrous. The three-mile-wide Toutatis asteroid, which flies by our planet every four years, is currently some 37 milliion miles away from Earth and expected to pass by on Wednesday. Here’s hoping the Mayans weren’t right about that whole end-of-the-world-thing after all.