Reason #342,942 why you should never trust anything you read on the internet, including (especially) this website: A GIANT ASTEROID IS GOING TO KILL US ALL… TODAY?!?
Not quite.
It’s unclear exactly where this rumor started, but some are tracing it back to a letter written by prophet and crazy person Rev. Efrain Rodriguez, who claimed that an asteroid would crash into Earth, somewhere in Puerto Rico, and “raise a giant wave, over 1,000 feet high, which will be entering the west part of the island immediately, reaching places never thought of on this Earth.” The impact, he wrote, “will be identical to a nuclear explosion,” 35 million people in the U.S. will die, something something God’s pissed at us, because Obama. It’s gibberish, but you know how these things go. One person shares it on Facebook, another only reads the headline and reports fiction as fact, and before long, A GIANT ASTEROID IS GOING TO KILL US ALL.
NASA is having none of it.
A fabricated image claims this account tweeted about an impending asteroid threat on Sept. 23. Both the image and claim are 100% fake.
— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) August 24, 2015
Asteroid 2012 TT5 will safely pass Earth tomorrow by about 5 million miles/8 million km or 21.5 LD (lunar distances). It poses no threat.
— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) September 23, 2015
As was previously known & expected, asteroid 2012 TT5 safely passed Earth at 8:40 a.m. UTC/4:40 a.m. EDT by 5 million miles/8 million km.
— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) September 24, 2015
Paul Chodas, the manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (fun!), issued a firm statement. “There is no scientific basis, not one shred of evidence,” he said, “that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates.”
I don’t know about you, but 5 million miles is too close for my liking. See you in the bunker.
(Via AL.com)