NASA Q&A

From the NASA Q&A web site:

Is there an asteroid that will hit the Earth in the year 2003?

There are no known asteroids which will come that close to the Earth...however, there are many small bodies in the solar system whose orbits we have not determined yet and which remain to be discovered in the next 6 years. Hopefully among them there are none that will impact the earth...but we really do not know for certain.

Why haven't we seen any aurorae in Minnesota lately?

Because the Sun is at it's minimum of activity so there haven't been many sunspot 'storms' to eject particles into space to later produce the aurorae on Earth. In the next year things should start picking up again as we get a bit farther into the next cycle which will peak around the year 2003.