How to watch the asteroid Apophis as it makes its not-so-close approach to Earth today. More here.
Closest approach, about 9 million miles, will take place around 5 pm (Eastern).
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9 million miles is about 36 times the distance of the Moon. Not close indeed. This illustrates the point that, if we were ever to discover a large asteroid with Earth’s name written on it, more likely than not, it would make a number of passes through our orbit before actually hitting the Earth. This would likely give us many years to give our high degree of motivation to find a solution to diverting it slightly. My point – the risk to humanity from an asteroid is frequently over hyped.