IS THE Earth passing through an extra-rocky patch of space? A spate of meteor reports has been followed by the closest pass to Earth yet reported for an asteroid.
Barely 10 hours after a fireball caused chaos in the Indian state of Orissa on 27 September (Â鶹´«Ã½, 4 October, p 5), an asteroid the size of a small house came within 82,000 kilometres of Earth – 20,000 kilometres closer than the previous record sighting in 1994. Meteors were also seen in San Francisco, Europe and Australia over the next few days.
Astronomers insist there is no connection between…
