Thinking out loud time! My favorite! To matter for a single pass, the object must be small and/or traveling slowly. Otherwise, itll just keep on cruising. Ite

Thinking out loud time! My favorite! To matter for a single pass, the object must be small and/or traveling slowly. Otherwise, itll just keep on cruising. Iteratively is a different story. Many objects repeatedly cross earths path. How that orbit changes over time i suppose is a function of the other gravity wells the objects pass when they arent near earth. I expect there are so many confounding gravities that only a certain belt\torus exists in the universe where, inside that torus, space stuff is capable of running into us. Side note: this article is clickbaity because it implies no one knew asteroids almost crash into us without us knowing, but thats not true. People know. There are hard reset buttons floating around in space and we might just press one without warning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_hazardous_object https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_hazardous_object