Scientists sound alarm as NASA says small chance asteroid 'Bennu' the size of the Empire State Building could smash into earth: 'It would be like unleashing 24 atomic bombs'

NASA has spent seven years trying to prevent Bennu -- an asteroid taller than the Empire State Building and named after ancient Egypt's fiery bird-god -- from crashing cataclysmically into Earth. While Bennu's chances of impact are just 1-in-2,700, more than five times a person's chance of being struck by lightning, NASA's team nevertheless has categorized it as one of the two'most hazardous known asteroids.' In a worst-case scenario, the roughly 510-meter wide, carbon-based behemoth would smash into Earth with 1,200 megatons of energy: 24 times the power of the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated (the Soviet Union's'Tsar Bomba'). If it happens, Bennu's impact would unleash its 1.2 gigaton impact 159 years from this Sunday, on September 24, 2182. While Bennu is nowhere near the size of the dino-killing, six-mile across space rock that hit the Yucatan 66 million years ago, astronomers believe that the asteroid'could cause continental devastation if it became an Earth impactor.'