True, I was surprised that two people independently came as close as we did. That's what I meant by "close enough for government work". I'll also stipulate that my calculation included a bunch of simplifying assumptions like 93*10^6 is a constant distance from earth to sun, that makes our orbit a circle which is nor true but makes the circumference calculation much simpler. Also assumed that the year is 365¼ days of 24 hours each which again is a simplification and fairly close.
What came as no surprise was the hyperventilation about a"NEAR MISS" which turned out to be thousands of earth diameters off target. To me a near miss would have taken out some communication satellites at 22,000 miles out.
What may prove to be a major problem would be the sun going into a phase where cronal mass ejections have replaced sun spots as normal events. If that proves to be true it's only a matter of time playing Russian roulette before we take a direct hit from such with an EMP to move us back several hundred years in the blink of an eye.
Regards,
GtG
PS I'm getting too old to worry much about things like this...
For those who can’t grasp just how close this was in celestial terms think of it this way. It takes 52 weeks for the Earth to circle the Sun. In two weeks the Earth only covers 1/26th of that orbit. The event missed the Earth by 1/26th of it’s orbit.