Close call

摘要

It could easily be the plot for a Hollywood disaster movie. Last February, a young dental surgeon called Jaime Nomen was sailing along the Mediterranean coast of Spain, checking images on his laptop from an observatory 600 kilometres away. Suddenly he spotted a speck of light speeding through the constellation Bootes. Nomen knew exactly what it was. He alerted the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which collects information about asteroids and comets.