durbnpoisn: xria: Zasteva: - The article, posted on March 14th (today), warns of a possible collision on March 21, 2014 (a week from now). Yet it cites scientists saying "As additional observations are made over the coming months, and the uncertainties decrease, asteroid 2003 QQ47 is likely to drop down the Torino scale."; so either the quote is months out of date, or the scientists are fully expecting it not to collide with earth.

Maybe the budget for asteroid tracking is so low, the new method of determining whether an asteroid is going to hit is to wait until a couple of months after it is due to hit, and then look outside - if the sky is still thick with ejecta and there is 30ft of snow over a land scoured by a giant tsunami and firestorm, then it means the asteroid was on a collision course.

You make an interesting point about the current budget being very low for asteroid tracking.  But exactly what would you propose be done about it?  First of all, there isn't a budget in this world large enough to fund finding every single rock that might be headed our way.  There are just WAY too many of them.  And secondly, even if we KNEW an asteroid were going to hit, we couldn't do a damn thing about it anyway