Huge asteroid will pass Earth within the Moon’s orbit on November 8

Something like this hitting the earth isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when.. All the planets and moons have been hit repeatedly throughout time as has the Earth.. Sooner or later one is going to give our little home world a good smack down.. The only way we as a race will survive is to colonize other worlds. Otherwise we have all our eggs in one basket... And one #$%$ truck is going to crush that basket... oh, and of course us along with it... It's all a matter of time..

Is there any chance it will hit the Kardashian house?

11-11-11

I'm enjoying these comments by readers below. But people are amazingly casual about this kinda stuff. When a large asteroid passes inside the radius of the moon's orbit - that is a very close miss in astronomical terms. That's like going down to the baseball park, somebody hits a slow pitch, and the baseball whizzes right past your nose. CLOSE! Although space agencies can see big asteroids using telescopes and radar, they cannot see the smaller rocks (size of a footbal field) until they're pretty close to Earth. A large city would be tostada if one of those connects with pay dirt.

The 1908 Tunguska event was caused by an object around 60 - 100 meters across. It didn't even make it to the ground. It burst 4 miles up and leveled the forest in a 25 mile radius. I understand this one is somewhat bigger.

"Did I say October 21st? I meant November 8th." H. Camping

A plan (or two or three) for coping with this kind of space problem is a good idea for having a space program. It just doesnt quite have the drama and insanity of war to help drive it into a national priority.

So how about some charts? A map, for crying out loud. Give us a clue where to look and when! Instead, we are invited to share this moronic essay without the facts?

Why do these amatuer journalists say that it was the largest asteroid since 1976 to pass near the earth and then not give a link or tell the name of the 1976 event? Have they even been to journalism school? Do any college even offer that anymore?... I would suggest that they all take a refresher course at yahoo. As their contributers never seem to have many facts that they cite, and their writing lacks much, quite shallow and misses many details.

This has been a crazy year. Thousands of birds falling dead from the sky right after New Year, a rare whale found on land in a field, the snowmageddon last spring, hurricanes, earthquakes, asteroids buzzing the plant, ....not a single pair of matching socks in my clothes dryer! What the heck is going on? I was telling Ethyl the other day, I said "Ethyl? It looks like the end of the world!" .....She said, "Go to the store and get some toilet paper and milk" ....You know? you can't ride out the end of the world without toilet paper and milk.

A book written by REAL SCIENCE-GUYS really got my college-educated attention a few years ago : Rain of Iron and Ice. We on Earth live in a VERY dangerous neighborhood, with lots of 'drive-bys'...more to come.

If this rock were to hit dead center on Mecca I'd laugh my Hiney off untill the concussion hits our side of the planet then I'd kiss my own hiney good bye.

Passing asteroids. Sounds painful.

Tuscan Arizona??? Who proofreads these things?

So if it did pose a danger to the Earth, just what exactly do these scientists think they could do about it? That’s the troubling part of this. That, and the fact that there are fewer people on the entire planet charged with looking out for these dark, hard to find, and potentially massively destructive objects than work in your local McDonald’s. Typical of government’s propensity to wait for a disaster to happen before it takes steps to prevent a reoccurrence, they’ll wait for something like this to sneak up and hit us before they take the threat seriously, but by then it could be far too little, too late. Some of these things are as big as Mt. Everest or larger, and could trigger an ELE – an Extinction Level Event.

Is it possible? Yes, in fact it's practically inevitable and really it's just a matter of time. It could happen a million years from now or it could happen tomorrow, but eventually, it WILL happen. Scary? You bet!

can we just launch Ben Affleck at it i'd watch that thru a telescope..SPLAT!

Maybe we won't need a budget for 2012 after all!!!

*frantically welding my metal housedome*

"The rock was spotted by Robert McMillan of the Steward Observatory in Tuscan Arizona"
Editing would reveal that it should be, uh.... Tucson, Arizona !
-from someone who also needs editing.

if golbal warming is a problem why don't we collect excess carbom dioxide and ship it to mars to start warming it up then we would hav anothe place to go