Scientists Say Huge Asteroid Will Barely Miss Earth in 2040

Now that we’ve all lived through the Mayan apocalypse, we have bigger things to worry about. Scientists discovered a 460 feet wide asteroid headed straight for Earth that is expected to reach us in 2040. That’s not that far off. The impact would be so huge, it would release energy several thousand times greater than an atomic bomb. Would, but won’t. Luckily for us, astronomers from the University of Hawaii said there’s no chance the asteroid, known as 2011 AG5, will hit.

The path of 2011 AG5.

“An analysis of the new data conducted by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shows that the risk of collision in 2040 has been eliminated,” NASA declared Friday.

AG5 will come incredibly close, though, as it is expected to come within 890,000 kilometers of our planet, about twice the distance of the moon. Let’s hope nothing changes the path of this thing, like the Yarkovsky effect. The effect is produced when the asteroid absorbs the suns energy and releases it as heat, slowly altering its path.