No, Asteroid 2014 UR 116 Is Not Going to Hit the Earth

This is Part N of what is apparently an infinite series of "No, Asteroid XXX Is Not Going to Hit the Earth" posts. So on Oct. 24, 2014, a team of Russian astronomers found a near-Earth asteroid. Designated 2014 UR116, it's somewhere around 400 meters across, which is decent-sized. If it were to hit us, that would be bad. The good news is it can't hit us. It really can't; over the next century or so the orbit doesn't bring it any closer than about 5 million kilometers or so. That's a pretty wide ...