Thursday, January 06, 2005

Earth is safe from asteroid impact...for now

Out of the bomb shelters, everyone, and I hope you kept the receipt for all that Spam and bottled water. Asteroid 2004 MN4, which I wrote about a while back, will not slam into the earth in a massive flaming orgy of cataclysmic doom:

Over the past week, several independent efforts were made to search for pre-discovery observations of 2004 MN4. These efforts proved successful today when Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, were able to detect and measure very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to 15 March 2004. These observations extended the observed time interval for this asteroid by three months allowing an improvement in its orbit so that an Earth impact on 13 April 2029 can now be ruled out.

Phew. But, the killer rock will take another dozen shots at the citizens of Earth between 2044 and 2103. [Hat-tip: Liberty's Blog]

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