Make your wagers

You can react to the following news in one of two ways: You can spend the next 30 years worrying about it, or you can use it as an excuse to spend the next 30 years partying.

I report. You decide.

Somehow, this news escaped my attention when it was first reported, as well as escaping the attention of the handful of people I casually surveyed a few days ago. But an asteroid is headed our way. Its orbit past Earth in 2029 will miss us, but it will pass so close that some people will be able to see it in the night sky. In fact, the asteroid will be so close that there's a chance the Earth's gravitational pull might alter its orbit enough that when it returns in 2036, it could smack us head-on, astronomers concluded a few months ago.

It's not big enough to be an end-of-the-world asteroid. But at 1,000 feet in diameter, it's big enough to release 100,000 times more energy than did the Hiroshima nuclear blast, according to NASA. Another expert says an impact in the ocean could create a tsunami that would make the recent Indian Ocean disaster seem like a minor event.

Alarmed yet? If so, this is a good moment for a few words from the cooler-heads department. NASA's "impact hazard scale" puts the asteroid at level 1, which means that it is extremely unlikely there will be a collision. (A sure thing is level 10.) Furthermore, as more time passes and scientists are able to refine their calculations of the asteroid's orbit, the less likely a collision seems. One report put the odds at 1 in 15,000.

Yeah, well, here are a few words from the panicked-columnist department: The National Safety Council puts the odds at my dying in a plane crash in any given year at 1 in 441,000, and I still don't like flying. In contrast, those asteroid odds feel like a sure thing.

This is what I get for Web-surfing in my spare time. For all the glories of the Internet -- specifically, comely maidens -- occasionally you stumble across something like killer asteroid news. It's the worst kind of information. You can't do anything about it except worry.

Or you could do what I did -- call an expert for reassurance.

Let me introduce Wayne Christiansen, who is a professor of astronomy and director of the Morehead Observatory at UNC-Chapel Hill. Christiansen is a man of sound reason and good humor. He told me not to fret.

"They're finding [asteroids] all the time now," he said.

Christiansen explained that after comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter in 1994, the importance of tracking near-Earth objects took on a new urgency. More such objects were discovered, and a certain pattern emerged: Lots of objects, at first glance, seemed to be candidates for collision with Earth. But subsequent calculations almost always tipped the odds away from collision.

In other words, Christiansen said, he's not losing sleep over the chance we'll get hit in 2036.

If he'd stopped there, I'd be fine. But he didn't. He went on to explain that any asteroid's orbit is predictable, but not certain. If the Earth can alter its course, so can lots of other things in the solar system -- which means some asteroids that have been written off as no danger could, in fact, be future killers.

Great. I'm right back to where I was. Worry or party?

I vote for the partying.