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In the last few hours, a "Deep Impact" style scenario has unfolded in space as a huge asteroid grazed past Earth last night at 27,000mph.

The asteroid passed within 2 million miles of Earth, not exactly a "near miss" but close enough to make scientists sit up and track its progress with more than a passing interest.

The asteroid, known as 2000 EM26, was a chunk of space rock of around 885 feet (270m)in diameter, and was discovered on March 5th 2000.
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2000 ME 26 is the size of two football fields and would cause a major catastrophe were it to strike Earth. Fortunately, it’s going to pass us at what is thought to be a safe distance of two million miles. It will be possible to watch the flyby in a number of places, including Slooh.com. Is there any chance that they’re wrong and that it will strike us? The answer is: very little to none. An asteroid that size would have to be traveling much more slowly and pass far closer to Earth for it to be captured by our gravity. If that happened, it would be drawn into a ‘following orbit’ that would eventually end in a collision.
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When I published Nature’s End in 1985, I was laughed at by environmental reporters at a press conference in Washington. When Art Bell and I published Superstorm in 1999, Matt Lauer scoffed at us on the Today Show. When the movie based on it came out, even the director said, to defend himself, that it was probably an overstatement.
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