Nasa releases terrifying animation from its asteroid-hunting probe that pinpoints the space rocks that could hit our planet and wipe out humanity as scientists warn the threat has INCREASED

Nasa releases terrifying animation from its asteroid-hunting probe that pinpoints the space rocks that could hit our planet and wipe out humanity as scientists warn the threat has INCREASED

A stunning animation released by Nasa (main image) shows all of the comets and asteroids near Earth being tracked by the Washington-based agency's Neowise spacecraft (bottom left image). The animation was created using the Neowise craft's latest batch of data, including the locations of 97 previously unknown celestial objects found in the last year. Ten of the objects discovered by Neowise in the past year have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids. The animation comes after Czech scientists warned this week that Earth may be threatened by a newly discovered branch of a stream of meteoroids. This branch - an offset from the Taurid meteoroid stream - drastically increases the risk that Earth will be hit by a meteorite or asteroid. The bottom right image shows how close some of the orbits of selected Taurids from the new branch will get to Earth.