Don't look now, but we're being followed. You can't miss him - he's ten meters tall, made of rock, and goes by the snappy name of 2009 BD. Oh, and he's hanging six hundred thousand kilometers above your head.
This might sound like a scary Stone of Damocles but you can let Bruce Willis sleep in - it's much more of an oddity than a threat. 2009 BD was spotted earlier this year (no points for having worked that out), trailing Earth in almost the same orbit and at most a tenth of an Astronomical Unit away. Since we're only 1 AU from the Sun, and that's a fair sight bigger, we should be fine. There's absolutely no chance of the thing actually hitting us since even if it comes closer it'll be on course for a gravitational slingshot away again. For now its odd little orbit, swinging round the sun while under Earth's influence as well, is a useful astronomical study for scientists.
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