Asteroid 2012 TC4 is estimated to be 40 meters wide - that's as tall as New York's Statue of Liberty from her feet to the tip of the torch and twice the size of the meteorite that hit the Russian city Chelyabinsk in February 2013. The Chelyabinsk meteor resulted from a near-Earth asteroid and injured 1,500 people and damaged 7,000 buildings, according to Red Flag News.
The impact from Asteroid 2012 TC4 is expected on Oct. 12, 2017 - and it is expected to cause more devastation than the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
How do we prepare? The first problem is: scientists don't know where the asteroid will strike. Judit Györgyey-Ries, an astronomer at the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory, told space blog astrowatch.net: "We could see an airburst maybe broken windows, depending on where it hits."
Makoto Yoshikawa of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and member of NEOs Division at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) does not think the Earth is in danger. He told astrowatch.net: "The distance is very small. But this distance does not mean the collision."
