For the record the distance between Earth and Moon is about 384,000 km. So the asteroid came to within about 192,000 km of Earth. The real story is that it was not detected, not the distance.
I thought the same thing. But, doing the math, given that an object passes within a circle around the earth with radius 192,000 km, there is a 1 in 900 chance that it hits the earth. That's uncomfortably high for me.
> especially as they often tend to approach during the daytime when visibility is low due to the Sun's glare.
I would really like to sit down with the journalist and find out how they think night and day works. This sentence fragment displays potentially multiple shocking misconceptions.
> as they often tend to approach during the daytime
I mean, yes this is technically true, as things which must by definition be approaching the daytime side of the earth "often tend" to approach that way. But the phrasing indicates the article author is not aware of this relationship.
The other problem is that "during the daytime" is a meaningless concept when referring to the whole earth.
