ALTER MAN 47

AM47 loves all things 47 and this is no exception:

[About 4,700 asteroids are close enough and big enough to pose a risk to Earth, NASA estimated Wednesday after studying data beamed back from an orbiting telescope.

“It’s not something that people should panic about, (so long as they are sucking the oxygen mask)” said Amy Mainzer, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “However, we are paying attention to the issue.”

NASA defines a potentially hazardous asteroid as one large enough to survive the intense heat generated by entry into the atmosphere and cause damage on a regional scale or worse. The figure released Wednesday is lower than a previous rough estimate had projected, but more are now thought to be in orbits inclined like Earth’s, making them more likely to cross its path.]

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