A house sized asteroid passing us at only an eighth of the distance to the moon, that is a close shave.

It passed pretty close in 2012, lets hope it doesn't get even closer in 2022, maybe it could be pretty bad if it hits the moon.

SOURCE

Asteroid the size of a house will shave past earth in October, inside the moon's orbit.

Now that doesn't mean a lot to me, but this does.

In the Book of Revelation chapter 8 there is a description of what appears to be a comet or asteroid hitting earth, and the resulting wordwide destruction:
"8:7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
9 And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
12 And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise."

This is only the size of the one that hit Russia a while back, no Armageddon involved, you can put your apocalyptic texts away and give your worry beads a rest.

According to the laws of physics, the velocity is much more important than the mass. Double the mass, and you get double the energy released (this is what causes the damage). But double the speed and you get FOUR TIMES the energy. Treble the speed and you get NINE TIMES the energy and so on.

In theory, an asteroid the size of a car could wipe us all out if it were going fast enough. How likely is this? I have no idea, and neither has anyone else. It hasn't happened yet which might imply it is pretty unlikely, but that doesn't mean it won't happen five minutes from now.

Try not to worry.

Not quite that simple, if it comes in too fast the air protects us to a greater extent, many asteroids just explode at high altitude without any sizeable lumps hitting earth.

snapped my worry beads a while back.

In the big bang theory of evolution (if that's what you believe) our planet is approx. 4.6 billion years old. Given the huge numbers of so called evolutionary changes to turn us from algae soup to homosapien and all the other species I find it difficult to understand why 1 random event, in that 4.6billion years, of a huge meteor/asteroid has not destroyed us.

There have been at least 5 mass extinctions on earth with over 60% of species wiped out on each occasion and we have very little knowledge of what happened more than 0.5 billion years ago.

We are so dependent on technology and piped energy now that there would be little chance of long term human survival if any of those previous events recurred.

End-Ordovician, 443 million years ago

A severe ice age led to sea level falling by 100m, wiping out 60-70% of all species which were prominently ocean dwellers at the time. Then soon after the ice melted leaving the oceans starved of oxygen.

Late Devonian, c 360 million years ago

A messy prolonged climate change event, again hitting life in shallow seas very hard, killing 70% of species including almost all corals.

Permian-Triassic, c 250 million years ago

The big one � more than 95% of species perished, including trilobites and giant insects � strongly linked to massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia that caused a savage episode of global warming.

Triassic-Jurassic, c 200 million years ago

Three-quarters of species were lost, again most likely due to another huge outburst of volcanism. It left the Earth clear for dinosaurs to flourish.

Cretaceous-Tertiary, 65 million years ago

An giant asteroid impact on Mexico, just after large volcanic eruptions in what is now India, saw the end of the dinosaurs and ammonites. Mammals, and eventually humans, took advantage.