Asteroid the size of Gibraltar to pass Earth

An asteroid that is almost one mile wide – the size of the Rock of Gibraltar - will pass close to Earth today.

However, there is no risk of collision as it will be be 1.1 million miles away - about 4.6 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon and the closest an asteroid of this size has come to us in a decade.

2014 J025 is estimated to be between a quarter and three-quarters of a mile (600-1,400 meters) in width and is travelling at about 75,000mph, relative to the Earth.

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Amateur astronomers should be on high alert - the asteroid's surface is around twice as reflective as that of the Moon so while it will not be visible to the naked eye, it will be bright enough to watch through a home telescope for one or two nights.

Robotic telescope service Slooh said J025's close approach was an "alarming reminder" of just how close destructive chunks of space debris come to Earth on an almost daily basis and that even a 30-metre sized asteroid could cause "significant damage" to a major city, reports the Daily Mirror.

Nasa scientists are tracking the prospect of even closer encounters in the future. In 2027, the half-mile-wide 1999 AN10 is predicted to pass closer to the Earth than the Moon, coming within 236,000 miles of our planet.

There has been no asteroid strike big enough to wipe out all life for at least three billion years, says the Daily Telegraph. But the dinosaur era may have ended when an object six miles in diameter, possibly an asteroid, hit the Mexican coast 65 million years ago, triggering a global winter that wiped out three-quarters of the species on Earth.