Last week I had an immense problem looming over my head. The aforementioned issue made me lose sleep and concentration. I lost my thoughts as I blankly stared out the tagged-up window of the Metro train one afternoon. For some reason, the train was crowded that day. Looking around, I could see that I wasn’t the only person in the train with the weight of a giant stone teetering above. In between a group of lollygagging teens sat a young woman. Not much older than myself. The expression on her face could only pantomime the tempest that grew in my head. She looked terribly worried.

The stone felt like an immense boulder. Little did I know that 3 million miles above my head, the boulder was bigger than I could ever imagine.

“Asteroid 2012 LZ1 sailed within 3.3 million miles (5.3 million kilometers) of Earth at its closest approach on June 14.” –Space.com

That was the breaking news all over the astronomy websites. The asteroid was first discovered a week ago. The cataclysmic LZ1 is about one kilometer across and hurled across our universe, missing our planet by three million miles. Not far enough in my opinion. The massive rock by contrast dwarfed whatever issues I had, or those of the young lady on the train.

“This object turned out to be quite a bit bigger than we expected, which shows how important radar observations can be, because we’re still learning a lot about the population of asteroids,” said research team member Ellen Howell, of the Arecibo Observatory, in a statement.

Such a massive object would likely have serious global consequences if it hit Earth, the researchers said. –Space.com

If we were only given a few days warning about the passing of this giant, I wondered what, if anything, would the world’s leading scientists and governmental agencies do if the asteroid was actually heading towards Earth. Probably nothing.

Suddenly, the weight of the stone that hung above me became even more palpable. But as LZ1 tumbled by our planet, the rock inside my head also began to leave orbit. As if being pulled by the gravitational force of the real space rock.

LZ1 has left earth’s orbit and we managed to come out of it unscathed. For now.