Huge asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza will skim past Earth at ... trends now

A huge asteroid almost the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza will skim past Earth today, NASA has warned. 

The 120m (394ft) asteroid, scientifically named 2024 JZ, will pass the planet at a staggering speed of 56,000 mph (90,123) - 65 times faster than a bullet. 

But there is no need to head for the doomsday bunker just yet since this asteroid will safely past Earth at a distance of 2.6 million miles (4.2 million km). 

While this might sound far away, the asteroid is still classed as a 'near-Earth object' (NEO) by NASA.  

Dr Edward Bloomer, senior astronomer at Royal Greenwich Observatory, told MailOnline: 'Today's passing is not a concern at all, this is not the kind of thing we should be worrying about.'

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NASA writes: 'NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighbourhood.

'Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.'

A NEO is defined as any object that comes within 1.3 astronomical units (AU) (120.8 million miles) of the sun and hence within 0.3 AU (27.8 million miles) of Earth's orbit.

Asteroids are defined as 'potentially hazardous' if they comes within 0.05 astronomical units (4.65 million miles) of Earth and are larger than 140 meters (459 feet) in diameter. 

Even though 2024 JZ will be at a perfectly safe distance at just 0.028 AU from Earth, this is considered relatively close in astronomical terms. 

There will also be an even closer miss happening this evening as

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