An unmanned spacecraft with enough mass could be propelled into orbit to change the “gravitational pull” and alter the trajectory. Conspiracy theorists still haven’t pin pointed when earth’s final day will come – insisting it could be anywhere from the 22 to the 28 September.

“What you may not realize is that Earth is hit with about a hundred tons of extraterrestrial material every day”, Walsh told on Wednesday.

NASA stressed in the official statement released in August that the claims of such a strike are completely without a scientific basis and that if there were such a large asteroid hurling towards, its Near-Earth Object Observations Program aka “Spaceguard” would have detected it. “There are no known credible impact threats to date – only the continuous and harmless infall of meteoroids, tiny asteroids that burn up in the atmosphere”, NASA said at the time.

Professor Walsh said that instead of ruling out the possibility of the meteor strike, scientists should begin preparations to combat the devastating effects of the meteor strike. The rock could shatter and spread the destruction across the Earth’s surface.

He says he had a vision of the asteroid “entering the airspace of the town of Arecibo in Puerto Rico, striking the sea between the island of Mona and Mayaguez and triggering a magnitude 12 earthquake”.

While this may sound suspiciously close to the plot of 1998 disaster movie Deep Impact, Professor Walsh says: “Really, this would only be considered at a very, very last resort”.

Professor Walsh also referred to the history of Earth, where the extinction of dinosaurs was first rolled out but later found a reality. One version of the asteroid apocalypse rumor held that the massive impact – capable of disrupting or even wiping out all life on Earth – would take place on September 15.

In the absence of any dinosaurs to ask – Barney would probably be very little help in this situation – we’ll have to take Professor Walsh’s word for it.

Professor Walsh added that the result could be much more devastating if this sort of event was repeated above a densely populated area like London, New York or Beijing.