And yet NASA has released an official statement! There have been rumors circulating for a while now that the sky is going to fall on our heads. The rumor is that an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and will definitely hit us sometime in September.
In fact, the "experts" report that the impact date will be somewhere between September 15 and 28.
As for the impact point, "scientists" place it somewhere near Puerto Rico.
In short, hell is coming: The Atlantic and the Gulf coasts of Mexico and the US will disappear, just as Central and South America will.
Usually rumors about asteroids that will collide with our planet and wipe out humanity are ignored by astronomers, and they do so very well because it is a waste of time.
This time, however, we had an official denial from NASA, which probably had no other choice but to intervene and put an end to the online hysteria.
“There is no scientific basis – and not a shred of evidence – that any asteroid or any other celestial body will impact Earth on these dates,” said Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Division at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
For those of you who want to know the percentage of chances that an asteroid will hit us in the next 100 years: it's only 0.01%.
The figure comes from scientists who use space and ground-based telescopes to track comets and asteroids that pass within 30 million miles of our planet, so it's probably safe to assume their predictions are correct.
“None of the known objects will hit our planet in the next century,” says NASA researcher Paul Chodas.
So, there's no need to worry, unless of course you're a Gaul!
