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A City-Killer Asteroid Just Passed Shockingly Close to Earth, and Scientists Barely Saw It Coming

The object was small, fast, and hard to spot, which is exactly why near-Earth asteroids remain so unnerving.

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A bus-sized asteroid passed within 56,000 miles of Earth on Monday. That’s roughly a quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon. Scientists confirmed there was no chance of impact, which is the good news. The bad news is that nobody knew it was coming until a few days before.

The asteroid, designated 2026 JH2, measures somewhere between 52 and 115 feet in diameter and was traveling at just over 5 miles per second. Astrophysicist Mark Norris described it to New Scientist as “as close as you can get without hitting,” adding that it’s “the kind of thing that would ruin a city quite efficiently, if it........

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