It’s a little jarring when NASA tells us about giant asteroids that could’ve hit the Earth after they’ve safely drifted past us, like an intergalactic version of “Nothing to see here, folks.”
But the agency has said that when asteroid TV135 swings back through our neighborhood in 2032, there’s a chance it’ll actually smack into us. It’s not a good chance, the current odds are 1 in 63,000, but astronomers are still keeping their eyes on it. “That puts the current probability of no impact … at about 99.998 percent,” says Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office on its website.
2013 TV135 is roughly a quarter mile long and was detected by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Ukraine. If you do want something to freak out about, astronomer Phil Plait happily points out on Slate.com that we’ve only detected around 1 percent of the dangerous, potentially Earth-affective asteroids in space. Sleep tight.
But wait, there’s more!!
A research team from Harvard University believe that 3I/ATLAS, a seven-mile-long object speeding like a freight train on steroids at 130,000 mph, through our very own solar system, could be an alien spacecraft! (We could have used Don Mazzone out there policing that speed demon) Why? Its extremely long trajectory doesn’t match up with any known regular comet. It’s an interstellar comet which means unlike all the other comets, it came from outside our own solar system.
It is amazing that they can predict the length of this monster from so far away. Based on the size, who knows what could be inside and that’s what ‘click bait’ is all about. Click once and you’ll get dozens of related stories, all phony with plenty of ads.
On the other hand, this could be humanities first real interaction with something we don’t understand like when we play rocks paper scissors and the other person throws a single finger and says “dynamite, it blows up everything”. We’d like this person to get taken up in a ship and experimented on.
When comets approach the sun and are warmed by its heat, frozen materials within them are transformed from solids straight into gases. This results in gases escaping, a process called “outgassing,” is sort of like when Uncle Willy comes for supper and he scarfs up all the beans.
We have been prepared for this possible eventuality of believing there is life somewhere else in space by the many movies depicting such scenarios. Are we alone in the universe or do we have to share? We’re fascinated and also repulsed by the possibilities.
So, yeah, there’s just as much of a chance we’ll be visited from afar as you pulling into a legal parking spot in front of Joe’s Stone Crab.
