What do you do if you’reNASA and have to fight off a crazy rumor that says the planet will be hit Armageddon-style by an asteroid in mid-September? Normally, nothing. In rare cases though, you go ahead and deny the whole thing in an official announcement, so that all the crazy talk about such an impeding tragedy might stop.
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There is no asteroid threatening Earth NASA titled its Wednesday announcement, saying that numerous recent blogs and web postings “are erroneously claiming” that an asteroid will hit the planet at some point from September 15th and September 28th near Puerto Rico.
Rumors say that the hit will “causing wanton destruction to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States and Mexico, as well as Central and South America,” and the space agency says that’s definitely not the case.
“There is no scientific basis — not one shred of evidence — that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates,” NASA’s Near-Earth Object office manager Paul Chodas said. “If there were any object large enough to do that type of destruction in September, we would have seen something of it by now.”
According to NASA, all known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids it’s aware of have less than a 0.01% chance of hitting Earth in the next 100 years. The agency monitors all asteroid and comet traffic around the planet, trying to predict their paths and assess potential danger.
Meanwhile, Gizmodo summed up what the conspiracy theories are saying. CERN’s updated Large Hadron Collider has a logo that kind of looks like it says 666, which is apparently an indication of an impending doom. The U.S. military’s Jade Helm and Canadian’s similar Maple Resole massive military operations are also seen as proof that something big is about to go down. Other “signs” include big box stores closing so that the military can use them, and that the elite are gradually disappearing in cities underground.
For those people believing into this Armageddon talk, NASA’s denial will just be seen as proof that the asteroid is really coming. Because, you know, they would deny it, wouldn’t they?
