Giant Asteroid Won’t Kill Everyone On Earth Today

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Whenever they say a giant asteroid is going to whiz by the earth, I imagine a fastball barely missing my face.

It's getting to where even the scientists are no longer interested in exaggerating the threats. True, the asteroid is coming towards us, but it's still going to be 1.1 million miles away. The cool thing is that NASA says this asteroid has a surface twice as reflective as the moon making it much easier to study.

The report says asteroid should be coming at us as if were coming from the sun and you might even be able to see it with binoculars (I'm still trying to figure out how to look in the direction of the sun when it's dark).  The asteroids name is 2014 JO25 (presumably because the person who named it had no imagination. I like to call it "Big Al").  The chunk o' stuff is said to be 2000 feet across. Supposedly you can catch it tonight and tomorrow night.

This also got me thinking, "what's the difference between an asteroid and a meteor?".  It's all about the size. Meteors are much smaller than asteroids.

This asteroid's orbit last brought it by the earth about 400 years ago, right around the time of Jamestown and Pocahontas (the real one, not the Disney princess).

http://www.newser.com/story/241390/mega-asteroid-to-buzz-earth-on-wednesday.html