News

An asteroid heading towards Earth the day before the US election is peak 2020

Picture:
Picture:
iStock/Getty Images/OLIVIER DOULIERY/NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP

As if Earth didn't have enough going on right now, there are reports that an asteroid is heading our way and could reach us the day before the US election.

According to the Centre for Near Earth Objects Studies at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory an object with the catchy name of 2018VP1 is due to come very close to Earth on November 2, the day before Americans go to the polls to decide between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Nasa's data says that the rock which was first identified at California's Palomer Observatory in 2018 is around 6.5 feet in diameter so is unlikely to cause any major damage or bring about Armageddon, it'll just leave that to the politicians.

Nasa did say that from their "21 observations spanning 12,968 days" that there could be three impacts but there is only a 0.41 per cent chance of it hitting Earth so you can rest easy for now.

Although the likelihood of this causing any sort of disruption in minuscule, given everything that is going on people are hardly surprised about this threat from the stars and are kinda in favour of it.

As we said, there isn't much to worry about by Donald Trump might use it as another excuse to postpone the election as he continues to trail Biden in most major polls.

The Conversation (0)