Just a reminder folks, that five years ago we weren’t too far from a massive asteroid hit on our small blue marble. Asteroid 2002 MN came within 120,000 km (75,000 miles) of Earth, which sounds a lot, but is actually no more than one-third the way to the Moon.
Asteroid 2002 MN was about 100 metres (328 ft) across, big enough to cause damage on a similar scale to the Tunguska Event of 1908, thought to be an exploding comet head that devastated a large area of Siberia. The closest recorded near-miss was a much smaller asteroid called 1994 XM1, which passed about 105,000 km (65,000 miles) away.
Hollywood has been there too of course, with the movie Deep Impact. It was fairly dire in terms of plot but the special-effects towards the end were OK, though New York is totalled once again - how about taking out another country’s big city next time, guys? You can have a look at Deep Impact on the video above; it’s been given a music audio track to replace the original, but that’s no bad thing.
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