The meteor—or comet fragment—was only a few tens of meters in diameter, according to modern estimates based on its 15 megatons energy blast. This 3D simulation, however, shows what something like Apophis will do if it hit Earth. I saw a while ago on the web, but now it is available in glorious HD, so you can see all the gritty-nitty detail of good old planet Earth getting completely obliterated.

Kind of helps putting things in perspective. NASA and the rest of the world better get up to speed on their anti-asteroid alert and destroy system, I don't care what they say about weaponizing space.

The fact is that these things are very real, and they are lurking out there. So with that in mind, keep your list of things before I die handy. You never know what awaits for us in 2009. [YouTube—Thanks Louise]

Yes, the MMR25 will have nine motors in each wheel, one to spin the main structure and eight more to control smaller embedded wheels for traction while deftly maneuvering along the highway, maybe even driving sideways. Special "oblique aerodynamics" mean that the sideways driving won't be penalized by wind resistance, either.

There's no glass: It's too damn heavy, and you won't need it, what with visual information coming in via a crazy camera array that feeds a 360-degree panoramic screen that surrounds your "pod."

It's plenty power efficient, too, getting 1,000 miles per charge out of lightweight composite-nano-fiber-jiggied lithium-based batteries. (No word on explodeyness, but presumably that's solved too.)

We're gonna go one step further and guess that the electric charge itself will come from just an hour or two under the hot sun, thanks to efficient solar cells. But ha ha, that would just be ludicrous, right? [Jalopnik]