Fascinating article, behind the scenes with astronomers debating the merits of issuing a 25% chance of mini-asteroid impact warning.

Earth almost put on impact alert – Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1, had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours…. It turned out to be bigger than anyone had thought – about 500m wide. It eventually passed the Earth at a distance of about 12 million km – 32 times the Earth-Moon distance, posing no danger to us whatsoever.

From the BBC – Via Linkfilter

Filed under: Uncategorized , Science, Space, Terror by gamma