PHEW! WE CAN GO BACK TO LIVING NOW

Not happening now..

Earlier reports of an asteroid the size of at least 3 football fields hitting Earth in 2036 has been proven wrong.  Collective sigh of relief please! Thank God. Thank God? All if not most of us would say that at hearing this news, even those Atheists among us. Why I wonder? Something to think about.

According to the NASA report:

NASA scientists at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., effectively have ruled out the possibility the asteroid Apophis will impact Earth during a close flyby in 2036. The scientists used updated information obtained by NASA-supported telescopes in 2011 and 2012, as well as new data from the time leading up to Apophis' distant Earth flyby yesterday (Jan. 9).

"With the new data provided by the Magdalena Ridge [New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology] and the Pan-STARRS [Univ. of Hawaii] optical observatories, along with very recent data provided by the Goldstone Solar System Radar, we have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future."

The April 13, 2029, flyby of asteroid Apophis will be one for the record books. On that date, Apophis will become the closest flyby of an asteroid of its size when it comes no closer than 19, 400 miles (31,300 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

Here's a nice actual photo of the offending piece of rock, if you could call it a picture much less "nice".

Can you please hold it steady?

Well, we can go back to doing whatever things we were doing or planning to do then. All we're going to get is a nice fireworks display in 2036.