I didn't even know there was a possibe suspect, but here it is:
The world can exhale a collective sigh of relief. A newfound asteroid tagged with the highest warning level ever issued will not strike Earth, scientists said Monday. The giant space rock, named 2004 MN4, was said on Dec. 23 to have an outside shot at hitting the planet on April 13, 2029. The odds climbed as high as 1-in-37, or 2.7 percent, on Monday, Dec. 27.
Researchers had flagged the object as one to monitor very carefully. It was the first asteroid to be ranked 4 on the Torino Scale, a Richter-like measure for potentially threatening space rocks. The asteroid is about a quarter mile (400 meters) wide, large enough to cause considerable local or regional damage were it to hit the planet.
All along, scientists said additional observations would likely reduce the chance of impact to zero for the April 13 scenario, but they did not expect any significant new data to allow such a downgrading for days or weeks. Instead, old observations provided the data necessary to rule out an impact. Several groups were looking for the asteroid in past observations.
Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, found very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to March 15 this year. Astronomers already had observations in June and from this month.
"An Earth impact on April 13, 2029 can now be ruled out," read a statement issued Monday evening by asteroid experts Don Yeomans, Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA 's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The good news is it ain't happening as thought. The bad news is, it doesn't rule out other similar events.
- Art Neuro
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