So, my boyfriend and I were in the drive-thru line at Cookout earlier today when he opened Snapchat and saw there is a meteor plummeting toward Earth today. At first I thought he was messing with me, but he showed me the article and I got a little scared. There have been many instances by which Earth was supposed to end such as the Aztec prediction for the world to end in December 2012, so I didn't think much of it. As I continued to read about it, though, it became more of a reality for me.

NASA has officially declared this meteor a "potentially hazardous asteroid." This means that if this asteroid makes impact with the earth, it will cause catastrophic regional damage. If it were to make contact, it would have the same explosive effect as a large nuclear weapon, which, obviously, would kill millions of people, depending on where it hits Earth.

This asteroid isn't alone though. There are not two, not three, but seven more asteroids. Some are binary, meaning they orbit one another, which could be potentially even more hazardous if impact with Earth were to occur.

Don't be afraid though, because it is believed that the larger asteroid will barely miss the Earth, meaning no catastrophic effects will come from its appearance. A new tool called a Hazardous Object Identifier has been developed by scientists from Leiden University in the Netherlands. It is able to identify asteroids and predict their potential impact with Earth using machine learning to better prepare us to defend ourselves from these big, dangerous rocks.

So far, the Hazardous Object Identifier has detected 13,258 asteroids, 11 coming as close as 3 million miles to Earth within the next 1,000 years. New technology is being invented and old technology is constantly being improved in order for humans to protect themselves from potential cosmic disasters in the future.

Obviously, there is no need to panic, but this is a little eye-opening to know that at any moment everything can be taken away from us within seconds.