Scientists had good news yesterday for people concerned about how long their pensions will last. The world could quite possibly end anyway on Feb 1, 2019. Astronomers say a huge asteroid is scheduled to crash into the Earth at 11.47am on that day. If it does it would wipe out an entire continent, plunge the world into a nuclear winter and take humanity to the brink of extinction. However, as seasoned asteroid story watchers will have realised, there is a catch. The odds that the world will end in 17 years' time, were last night estimated to be one in 75,000 and rising.That compares with the one in 10,000 chances of a person being killed in a car crash in any one year, and the one in 100,000 chances of being murdered. The odds of winning the national lottery jackpot are one in 14 million.