A scientist has suggested that there is an elevated chance of a large piece of space debris smashing into the Earth at any time. Mike Jones, a junior astrophysicist, said today that in the short period he has been employed on asteroid watch duties he’d noticed a near miss ‘virtually every night.’
He said that the first time he noticed a ‘huge rock’ passing by he ‘quite literally shat myself,’ adding that by the time he’d cleaned himself up the clouds had obscured his view. ‘But the next night I saw another, virtually identical lump of rock passing by,’ he said, expressing surprise that nobody else seemed to notice. ‘If nothing else, something that big’s got to affect the tides,’ he said.
‘I’ve noticed that it seems to be a slightly different asteroid each night, but the same ones seem to come round on a 28-day cycle.’, noted Jones. ‘There’s a crescent-shaped one could have your eye out, if you were 240km tall.’
Mike is urging anyone with a telescope to keep a sharp lookout for the asteroids. ‘To be honest, they’re that big and pass that close, you could see them with the naked eye.’ Mike is hoping the public will carry out this observational research ‘because my colleagues just laugh at me – probably because I’m new – and because I’m trying to solve the mystery where last night’s asteroid went. It couldn’t have gone far,’ he said.
throngsman, hat-tip to Squudge