Apocalypse Never: Huge Asteroid Will Miss Earth in 2040

This is a bit of cheery news a few days after the nonsensical "Mayan Apocalypse of 2012" -- the potentially hazardous asteroid 2011 AG5 will not (I repeat, will not) threaten Earth in the year 2040.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Ways to Stop an Asteroid

The 140-meter wide space rock whopper made headlines soon after it was discovered as its projected orbit gave it a 0.2 percent chance of giving us a very bad day in 2040. But University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomers rose to the challenge to better refine the asteroid's orbital trajectory to reveal that 2011 AG5 will miss us by 890,000 kilometers (550,000 miles) -- that's over twice the Earth-moon distance.

On cosmic scales, that's close, but on…
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