Party Like It's 2018?

Well, partying in 1999 was all in vain. Asteroid QW7 only came within 4m km of Earth in September 2000, though British parliament member Lembit Opik said at the time: "It's not a case of if we will be hit, it is a question of when. Each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery."

And now minor planet 2002 NT7 is no longer considered "the most threatening object in the short history of asteroid detection" (Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK), and is no longer expected to strike Earth in February of 2019.

Bummer. At least NASA has stopped buying lottery tickets and started working on avoiding asteroid impacts. Apparently they just want to push a potential killer asteroid to change its trajectory rather than blowing it up. Oh, well, even if "Armageddon" didn't get the astronomy right, at least they got the drillers right.

Extra Credit: If a "1bn tonne asteroid just 1km across striking the Earth at a 45 degree angle could generate the equivalent of a 50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion," how fast is it going?