There are rumors that the US is having people stay home because of an asteroid that will hit the earth soon. There is a comet called Atlas that flies around the sun towards the end of the month but is not supposed to get any closer to the earth than 83 million miles away. But an asteroid is flying by the earth April 29th called 1998 OR2, and is calculated to pass within 3,908,791 miles of Earth, moving at 19,461 miles per hour. The sun is 93 million miles away, and the moon is 238,855 miles away from the earth. That is over 16 times the distance between the earth and the moon. It is not likely either of those objects will get close to the earth. However, there is always a chance an object that accompanies an object could hit the earth. Often asteroids will have sister objects that follow in a parallel path, perhaps created from a collision with other objects as it travels through space. Often those extra objects can be seen in a telescope, and there are plenty of independent astronomers that would photograph such an object and let us know. Bottom line: There is no object coming to hit the earth in the near future. GE

https://twitter.com/ShepardAmbellas/status/1247322291555512320

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/world/asteroid-1998-or2-close-flyby-earth-scn-trnd/index.html