Economy
Here's What Would Happen if a Huge Asteroid Hit Your City
Would you dissolve in fire or would your clothes simply ignite?
Around the time people in California are getting lunch today, a honking great clod of space rock will be zooming over earth at a hair-raising proximity. (Not this one, as cool as it was.)
Asteroid 2012 DA14 will soar above the planet at a height of about 17,200 miles, above the heads of astronauts on the International Space Station but below the orbits of our geosynchronous weather satellites. The interplanetary cannonball will be so in our face that it might tremble with "asteroid-quakes" caused by the tug of earth's gravity; it's set to become the closest asteroid flyby that we know of since the 1990s.