NASA says “it will likely miss.”

Good thing, because this asteroid is bigger than a mountain and is moving at 34,000 mph, which – you will note, is awfully fast. It “should” miss the Earth by “a few million miles.” Comforting.

If you’re keeping score at home and have trouble figuring out what “Miles” mean when it comes to the vast distances in space, the moon is approximately 250,000 miles from Earth. So if the asteroid does indeed miss by the “few million miles” predicted, it will be 5-6 times the distance from Earth to the moon.

And thank god for that because it’s not like we got a ten year warning allowing us to send Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt up to blow the thing off course, or just shatter it into hundreds of asteroids to finish off the planet in a more interesting manner.

According to International Business Times, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) identified that the “potentially hazardous” asteroid could come close to intersecting with our planet’s path on February 15, 2020, at 6:05 a.m. (EST).

If we are to trust that this “rock” the size of Mt. Everest (that is the approximation) was just discovered, we would have had two days warning. We would have had time for one hell of a last Valentines day to do … you know, and max out the credit cards on something, before this visitor rendered life on Earth near extinct:

The colossal space rock, which is expected to pass over our planet from a distance of around 3.6 million miles, is estimated to have a diameter of around 3,250 feet, making it large enough to potentially “trigger a nuclear winter and mass extinction events” should it collide with Earth.

Yes, history teaches us that mountains hitting the Earth traveling 5 times the speed of a rifle bullet do have an “adverse impact” on Earth’s future. On the other hand, if you’re a cockroach or a small raven type of bird, the type of species looking to be the next intelligent species to take over the planet in sixty-five million years, this would have been your chance.

Sometimes I like to think about the fact that there is no rule at all that says that the asteroid had to miss by 3 million miles. There is no reason in physics that the asteroid couldn’t be traveling at 34,000 miles per hour just 3.6 million miles to the side. It would destroy civilization. It means that just by “chance,” Saturday will likely be a normal day. We will be tweeting about the ridiculous things Trump did the day before, and the campaign to come.

It is just as likely that the few million that would have survived the impact would be wondering if they could survive a year with the destruction of all they’d know.

Something to think about.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom