The computers at the Minor Planet Center recently sorted through some 10,000 observations of astronomic phenomena and deemed a handful as deserving follow-up because they were either newly discovered or on a path in Earth's general vicinity. The preliminary trajectories plotted by the MPC were based on too few observations to be accurate, but unbeknownst to center officials, the computer had found one object on a collision path with Earth. The discovery was posted on the Web late in the day on Jan. 13, 2004.
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