Breathe easy: NASA says asteroid will not destroy Earth next month
Science
Breathe easy: NASA says asteroid will not destroy Earth next month
The world can breathe easy. A giant asteroid is not hurtling toward Earth about to wipe out much of the Americas, NASA has felt compelled to explain following a swirl of online rumors. Blogs and offbeat news sites have claimed a major asteroid will impact Earth in mid- to late September near Puerto Rico, causing major destruction throughout the region.
There is no scientific basis — not one shred of evidence — that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates.
Paul Chodas, manager of the Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
But that theory is entirely baseless, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a post this week, trying to tamp down the doomsday predictions. NASA pointed out that doomsday theorists have made similar predictions in the past, including the Mayan calendar claim in 2012, all of which were not backed up by science and turned out to be false.
