Doomsday Asteroid September 2015: Will There Be An Impact Near Puerto Rico?

If the apocalypse is happening next month, it's news to NASA. The space agency has shot down recent rampant reports that an asteroid will hit Earth between Sept. 15 and Sept. 28. And they should know, because they specialize in tracking such objects.

This kind of "news" can develop a life of its own based on how many people share the story. Sometimes a misunderstood or misquoted section goes viral, prompting more stories clarifying what the original article was actually about. Other times, a site eager to get massive traffic from a story shared on Facebook creates a new thing to be worried about. Such articles pop up every year, usually involving badly photoshopped images and comments from random "experts." After a few shares, the article is a runaway train.

The asteroid story in question said that NASA and FEMA have been working together to prepare for a cosmic strike expected in late September, that NASA has set up a "Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario," and that FEMA's been stockpiling supplies and medicine. The White House, it continues, has been alerted and the French foreign minister is well aware of this 2.5 mile-wide asteroid. Most of the sites that have picked up and spread the story have the word "truth" in their names, which boosts their credibility in some readers' minds.

But there's absolutely zero truth to the rumor. NASA is always tracking asteroids -- in fact it has a whole office dedicated to tracking near-Earth objects. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory routinely observes new asteroids and tracks their trajectories, and it confirms there's nothing that large, or deadly, coming this way anytime soon.

"There is no scientific basis -- not one shred of evidence -- that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. If an object that large were approaching Earth, NASA would have spotted it a long time ago.

The space agency has a history of debunking these stories. There was the comet Elenin in 2011, the Mayan calendar apocalypse of 2012, and the annual doomsday asteroid stories. Then there's Zero-G Day and the 2015 Double Moon. The former states a rare cosmic alignment will lead to a brief moment of reduced gravity on Earth while the latter claims the moon and Mars will be visible in the night sky in July. The Double Moon story has been around for a decade and has been regularly debunked. And the next time you read a doomsday story with Nibiru in the headline, it's best to just ignore it. Nibiru has been a favorite of conspiracy theorists claiming a mystery planet or object -- dating back to Babylonian texts -- is on a collision course with Earth.

For actual asteroids that will pass Earth, check NASA's NEO Earth Close Approach table. The largest asteroid that will make a close approach to Earth measures 800 feet and will pass at a comfortable 4.2 million miles from the planet. "Not a single one of the known objects has any credible chance of hitting our planet over the next century," Chodas said.