Robert Inventor

2002 NT7 is closest at 16.50 today, UTC time. It will be 61 million kilometers away and they know the distance exactly to within 127 kilometers, and the time of the flyby accurate to the nearest minute. It is no risk to Earth.
It is already well above our orbit though, it crossed the orbit of Earth several days ago on the 8th. And 61 million kilometers is further away than Mars at its closest. It is not very close.

Earth's orbit in blue, 2002 NT7 in white.
More details here

It actually crossed our orbit already on the 8th. It is already moving upwards away from our orbit. Earth is catching up on it from behind and is closest on the 13th at 61 million kilometers. That's further away than Mars at its closest, and much further away than Venus at its closest.
The red top tabloids and other sensationalist press and YouTube videos are going wild about this, in many different languages too. It is my most often asked question at present from scared people, whether their lives are at risk because of this asteroid. It doesn't matter if they say it or write it in Russian, Spanish, or whatever language it is, or enlist the services of clairvoyants or astrologers to pronounce about it - it is still utter nonsense.

For any of you who haven't seen it, here is a stereo image of Ultima Thule, alternating between two images which help if you don’t have 3D Anaglyph glasses. The interesting thing about it is that there is no sign that the two lobes are more than slightly squashed by touching each other. They seem to have formed like this, in a gentle process, as separate objects that gradually grew by gravitational attraction of smaller pieces. Then eventually, the system lost energy probably due to influence of some third moon, and as they came together gently touched each other.

There are many sensationalist stories today about this research. But they were looking at the past history of this volcano. Not the present. It is not ready to collapse right now and is closely monitored. Likely to be centuries to millennia before a collapse if one is possible at all - it may have ended that phase too. A normal eruption would be devastating for local people and it is closely monitored. It probably did not make the Neanderthals extinct but the 2–4C global temperature reduction for a couple of years might have helped modern humans to get an edge over the Neanderthals at a critical time in the past.
Example stories to debunk:

This may be a welcome change from the climate change discussion which got a bit heated over the weekend. The Talanoa climate change story telling dialogs. They have been going on all day, in seven simultaneous sessions, today, 11th December 2018. The stories have been archived and you can rewatch them via Skype

Talanoa is a traditional word used in Fiji and across the Pacific to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue. The purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and to make wise decisions for the collective good. The process of Talanoa involves the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.

This is running as a scary story in the news today. I’m asked if it means we are all going to die. No, it does not. That was a 10 °C rise and we are headed towards 3.6 °C at maximum with the Paris pledges already. With the Paris agreement if they continue to ramp up the pledges they should get within 2 °C, many countries have already got to that point in their pledges and a fair number to within 1.5 °C. Others, especially China and Russia, face huge challenges but are rising to them especially China. We aren’t currently headed for anything like 10 °C.

Short
summary - the risk from larger asteroids of 1 km upwards, large enough
to have some global effects is more or less retired as a result of
astronomical searches for the last few decades. There is still a risk
from smaller asteroids, but in most cases we’d be able to deflect them
if necessary, or evacuate the area. The chance of dying from an
asteroid is tiny, far less than the risk of dying of lighning.

20 - 40 METER ASTEROIDS ARE TINY - JUST
LARGE ENOUGH TO GET THROUGH THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE

An
asteroid 20 meters in diameter hits every 80 years or so. Since only 1%
of the Earth is urban that means around 8,000 years between impacts on
an urban area.

Coverage began at 2 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. UTC). Landing started about 40 minutes later, the entire landing telemetry was streamed live through the briefcase sized Mars Cube One interplanetary "cube sats", and at around 3.01 p.m. EST they got first confirmation of the landing. First image from the surface arrived several minutes later, relayed through the cube sats, and the landing went without a hitch. See the timeline here NASA Landing on Mars milestones

Many journalists have penned exaggerated, click baity but inaccurate articles about the IPCC report on climate change. One of the worst is the one published in the NY Times. It doesn’t have that many out and out mistakes, but it is a highly respected source, and so its mistakes, particularly the confusion of carbon costs and carbon pricing, and not being clear about what happens in 2040, in 2075 or 2100, confused many people.

This is running as a scary story in the more sensationalist science outlets. Dark matter barely interacts with matter and if they are right we are right in the middle of it already. It can’t do any harm. It’s been doing this for all of human history and more.
It's not even like a wind. Not even like the pressure of light. It's like nothing at all.

Nothing to worry about for us. It's pointing in the wrong direction to ever harm us with the gamma ray burst jet. Their best fit model is that it is angled at 30 degrees to the line of sight.
It is too far away from us anyway at 8,000 light years. And there are no gamma ray burst candidates close enough to harm us. I go into that in detail in my article:
But this would be seriously bad news for any living beings that are on stars right close by within a few light years especially, along the line of the jet. Up to 50 light years away, it would cause significant effects on a planet like ours.

This is a very bizarre click bait title from the NY Post that is scaring people. There is nothing here to worry anyone. It is not true at all,even the article itself says nothing about the planet exploding. Just some journalists inventive idea about a way to get people to click on the title?? Fake news. But the research is interesting, an interesting puzzle
Fake click bait title from the NY Post: