The chances of a recently discovered mile-wide asteroid, forecast to hurtle towards Earth, actually hitting the planet are “minimal”, a Nasa scientist said today.
But if it did, asteroid 2002 NT7 would strike on February 1 2019 unleashing tidal waves, massive fires, global volcanic activity and an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy most of the electronics on Earth.
Astronomers have given the object a 0.06 rating on the Palermo technical scale (a scale used to measure asteroid threats), making it the first to be given a positive value.
Last month an asteroid the size of a football pitch missed the Earth by 75,000 miles - less than one-third of the distance to the moon. It was not observed until three days later.

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