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NASA Predicts Asteroid Will Pass Close To Earth On Day Before Election

Amy Pilkington
Amy Pilkington

It's 2020. We started with the tail end of the 2019 fire season raging across Australia, have a global pandemic with no signs of slowing down, racial and class unrest, murder hornets, the 2020 hurricane and fire seasons are only just starting, and there is a very important election coming in November.

If you thought that was more than enough, Mother Nature has decided to go all "Hold my beer," and according to CNN, NASA has released a statement predicting that an asteroid is going to be passing close to the Earth the day before Americans go to the polls.

Cool. Coolcoolcool.

To say that the internet was a little spooked by this news would be putting it mildly.

In normal years, NASA's 0.41 percent chance of it impacting Earth would seem like great odds.

In 2020... those odds are not in our favor.

Thankfully, a closer look at the statement reveals that it's nothing to worry about.

Though NASA makes note of anything that comes close to Earth, the size of the object is the more important data point for our sanity.

This one is 0.002 kilometers in diameter, or about 6.5 feet.

Even if it does enter our atmosphere, it'll burn up before impact.

According to NASA, any asteroid under 25 km (82 feet) is too small to survive the journey through the atmosphere.

Phew.

So there is no need to panic, but we can add "asteroid day before US election" to the 2020 report card.

Sure, it belongs down with the murder hornets in the "Sounds Terrifying, But Thankfully Overblown" category, but definitely worth being there.

If only to remind us of how very much worse this year could be.

h/t: CNN

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