As I write this, a house-sized asteroid is rocketing towards us at 36,126 miles an hour. Scientists have given it the catchy name “2025 TC” and have noted that it’ll pass within 53,400 miles of the Earth’s surface later today. That might sound like a long way away, but in cosmic terms it’s the equivalent of a bullet grazing your skull.
Or, to put it another way, NASA confirms that at its nearest, it’ll be nearly five times closer to the Earth than the moon. So, is it time to call up a gang of blue-collar deep-core drillers to make a last-ditch trip to the asteroid and plant a nuclear bomb inside? Well, not quite.
