I browse the CBC news websites quite frequently at work. Today I came across this article, which details the near-miss of a 10-story-sized asteroid that flew by the earth at a distance of 72,000 km on Monday. The article says that astronomers didn't know about it until Saturday.
The article compares the asteroid with one of a similar size that exploded over Siberia in 1908, devastating the landscapes with the force of 1,000 atomic bombs. That was called the Tunguska event (More on that here).
There is a lot of talk in the astronomy community lately about finding another Earth in the extrasolar regions of the Milky Way. This Friday, NASA is launching the Kepler telescope to take a closer look at the orbital patterns of Earth-like planets.
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