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2004 MN4 Probably Won't Kill Us

Posted by timothy on from the this-wrecks-a-bunch-of-pick-up-lines dept.

Xshare writes "It's now official. NASA's Near Earth Objects page lists 2004 MN4, the asteroid that's been covered on slashdot recently, as having a 1 in 56,000 chance of hitting earth, and even then only in 2037. It seems that earth was near the edge of the cone of probability of when it could go. As the cone kept closing, the probability of hitting earth grew, but it kept getting closer to the edge. It's now outside the cone, and we can be safe."

1 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. I still want an explanation... by mtaff · · Score: 1, Troll
    for the missing data. This morning there were like 189 observations, and now there are only 118. Are they throwing out data they don't agree with? Was the data misinterpreted? Did they have problems with metric conversion?

    NEODyS says over 200 observations came in in the last five days alone. What's going on here? Anyone from NEO/JPL want to enlighten us?