There is good news for everyone on Earth; the inner solar system has less asteroids in the mid-size range than previously speculated. This means there is less of a chance we will collide with an asteroid and end up like the dinosaurs from 65 million years ago. Thanks to NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, we can more easily detect asteroids using infrared imaging. Using this technology astronomers now know that there are 40% less mid-size asteroids than indicated by visable light searches. All asteroids are heated by the sun so they all are displayed equally well in infrared imaging; however, the previous technique of visable light searches gave incorrect data since an asteroid's individual albedo was based on the metallic composition of it outer layer. In short the shiner the surface the brighter and larger the asteroid appeared, and visa versa. Now that this bias has been dispelled I feel a bit safer knowing that science has found more evidence against our imminent demise in 2012.
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