Large asteroid to pass Earth on Christmas Eve

/Screen capture from Twitter

A 2.4 kilometer-wide asteroid is expected to pass closest to Earth on Christmas Eve.

Named “2003 SD220,” or asteroid 163899, it will be 11 million kilometers away - 28 times farther than the moon, the British Daily Mail reports.

It is moving toward Earth at 28 kilometers a second.

The asteroid was discovered in 2003 and NASA classified it as a “potential human-accessible target.”

It is expected to make a return to Earth in 2018.

Some say the asteroid may cause earthquakes and trigger volcanoes, believing the asteroid has enough gravitational pull.

But experts have dismissed these claims, saying the assertions have no scientific basis.

“There is no existing evidence that an asteroid or any other celestial object is on a trajectory that will impact Earth,” said Paul Chodas, a manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “In fact, not a single one of the known objects has any credible chance of hitting our planet over the next century.”