In Five Years This Asteroid Will Pass Closer Than Any In Human History

Scientists used to fret that it would hit the planet

(By Astronomical Institute of the Charles University: Josef Ďurech, Vojtěch Sidorin — http://astro.troja.mff.cuni.cz/projects/asteroids3D/web.php?page=db_tumblers, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68634501)

A major asteroid strike on Earth sounds like something out of a disaster movie or something from the distant past. The idea of a massive space rock crashing into the planet at high speeds is terrifying. Due to the Earth’s human population and the density of…