&gt; With this in mind, we can view our future with some certainty. Something big is going to smash into us, sooner or later, and probably sooner.<p>I started reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan a week ago and he discusses the Tunguska event for several pages. It&#x27;s an amazing book that I wish I had studied long ago. Had I not read that book, this statement would have instilled an impending sense of doom into me, which does nothing but demoralize me. Now that I&#x27;ve read that book, I can now tell with certainty that this prophecy is utter crap. As this article mentions, the asteroids are being tracked, so, we most likely will know it before hand.<p>OTOH, here&#x27;s an article from science alert<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencealert.com&#x2F;next-month-an-asteroid-will-pass-so-close-to-earth-that-we-could-see-it-in-the-sky" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencealert.com&#x2F;next-month-an-asteroid-will-pass...</a><p>&gt; Before you freak out, there&#x27;s no chance that the asteroid is going to smash into us. The space agency is still determining its exact trajectory, but at the closest estimate, it&#x27;ll be 18,000 km (11,000 miles) away as it passes us by - which would make it easily viewable with the help of a telescope. To put that into perspective, that&#x27;s roughly one-twentieth the distance from Earth to the Moon. Alternatively, the asteroid could travel further afield, and pass us at a distance of around 14 million km (9 million miles).<p>&gt; The reason for the big difference in these two estimates is that NASA only discovered this asteroid three years ago - hence the very-catchy name, asteroid 2013 TX68 - and haven&#x27;t had much time to observe it just yet.