Better Chances of Space Death :)

Ignorance can be bliss, especially when it involves not knowing about death meteors from space. Sam Bowring cringes beneath the heavens.


So NASA got something wrong, which is about as surprising as a rocket blowing up on the launch pad ... and I wish I didn’t have to know about it.

A thirteen year old schoolboy, Germany’s own Nico Marquardt, has corrected a NASA-powered calculation concerning the likelihood a future-killing death meteor hitting the earth and wiping out all civilisation, including Starbucks (so admittedly not all bad). NASA (which stands for Not Always Screamingly Accurate) thought the chances were one in 45 000. I quite like those odds. There are other things I’m more statistically likely to die from, which I can therefore obsess over more realistically, like getting my tongue caught in a escalator.

However Mr Smarty-German did some calculations, realised NASA had forgot to carry the one (or something like that) and discovered the chances of Oblivion From Space are actually more like one in 450. Still pretty good odds but, when talking about the mass extinction of life as we know it, I’m all in favour of the extra zeros. Bring on the zeros.

Okay, so I tell a fib, NASA didn’t forget to carry the one. What was missing from their calculations was the possibility that the meteor would smash into one of earth’s orbiting satellites as it whooshes past, and change its trajectory. Basically, we might get side swiped, leading to a mass pile-up. I say, if it’s close enough to take out satellites, it’s TOO FRICKIN’ CLOSE PERIOD. Load up a satellite full of bombs or get Bruce Willis on the job – something!

Better yet, as I said at the start, I don’t need to know about this at all. I don’t think there’s anything in particular I can do about a large icy rock hurtling through space, except worry. Give me something I can send an email about, and I’m there. But something tells me this meteor is Out Of Office.

One small comfort is, this catastrophe won’t potentially happen until 2036. Still, I have moments of strange galactic vertigo sometimes, as I stare up into the sky and realise how much at the mercy of things we really are ... how truly fragile we could turn out to be, should something knock our fishbowl off its perch.

Well, guess I’ll wait and see if I even make if that far. Lot of escalators standing between me and 2036.

Hungry, hungry escalators.

Not if I eat them first!

- Sam Bowring