Picture us not surprised: over the weekend, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) caused a minor ruckus when making public a projection about asteroid 2018VP1 potentially coming incredibly close to planet Earth on November 2, the day before the election is set to take place. How 2020 of the universe, right?
Not taking anything away from the Center for Near Earth Objects Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the headlines do sound a bit gimmicky and, upon closer inspection, the details of the celestial object make it clear that we've got nothing to worry about.
The object is super small, about 6.5 feet across, and "if it were to enter our planet's atmosphere, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size," said NASA in an official statement. Just to make things clear, the agency underlined that the comet "poses no threat to Earth." According to official data, the chance of it actually hitting us is at a very low 0.41%.
Speaking of asteroids: back on August 16, a small object measuring between 10 and 20 feet across made the closest approach to Earth ever recorded by a known near-Earth asteroid—and experts only caught a glimpse of it about six hours after it passed by our planet. So this whole thing might not really be a big deal?
That being said, a whole lot of events that we initially swept under the rug have become major catastrophes this year (COVID-19! Firenados! Giant hornets!) so let's all be careful, stay calm but... expect the worst?
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