An Asteroid Threat to Earth? Not Right Now

Perhaps you have seen or heard of the claims that there is an asteroid out there (2007 TU24) that is going to pass by the Earth on January 29th and put us in danger.

Now, asteroids of all sizes and shapes pass by the Earth all the time, some a lot closer than this one. But the conspiracy theorists and doom sayers are spouting their nonsense about the “great threat to the planet.”

This chunk of rock is about 400 yards wide (give or take), and is passing over 300,000 miles from the Earth at its closest. Now, this is farther than the moon. You read that right. This piece of rock will not get even as close as the moon is to Earth. And the moon is substantially larger.

These wackos are also making outrageous claims about “electrical energy” on the asteroid. It’s pure nonsense, again.

I am going to point you to this YouTube video by Phil Plait, a professional astronomer, author, and the owner of the Bad Astronomy website (where he has an excellent blog, and debunks all this wacko stuff).

I would urge everyone who sees this kind of “out there” outrageous claims to take a minute, realize that the people making these claims never can back them up, and seek out actual science sites like Phil’s Bad Astronomy site. I mean, why panic over nothing?

Now that this is all settled, let’s talk about people seeing what they want to in images. More on that - the “Martian Bigfoot” - later.