We can all breath a sigh of relief as the European Space Agency says that the chances that a newly-discovered asteroid with the potential to wipe out a city will hit Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046 have plummeted. The AFP news agency reports that the asteroid, which is named 2023 DW and is estimated to be around the size of a 50-metre Olympic swimming pool, was first spotted by a small Chilean observatory on February 26. It swiftly shot to the top of NASA and ESA lists of asteroids that pose a danger to Earth, leading to a raft of alarming news headlines, but the head of the ESA’s planetary defence office says the probability of it hitting us has fallen to one in 1,584, and will continue to fall all the way to zero.
