Free Republic

The first of the new large near-Earth asteroid discoveries is named 2013 UQ4, and it is perhaps the most unusual. This approximately 19-kilometer (12-mile) wide object was spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey on Oct. 23 when the asteroid was 435 million kilometers (270 million miles) away from Earth. Not only is this object unusually large, it follows a very unusual highly inclined, retrograde orbit about the Sun, which means it travels around the Sun in the opposite direction of all the planets and the vast majority of asteroids. The only objects usually found in retrograde orbits are comets, which...

Next week, the Earth's residents can once again play the popular game of "What if?" What if a hunk of cosmic rock is out there on a collision course with Earth? At the moment, an asteroid labeled "(433) Eros" is rushing toward our planet on a course that will bring it relatively close, at least on a cosmic scale. On the one hand, the chunk of rock—measuring 30 by 13 by 13 kilometers (19 by 8 by 8 miles)—is approaching Earth closer than any asteroid of this size has for a long time. But on the other, it is currently...