If you’re reading this, it’s not too late

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/09/2017 (3240 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whew! That was a little too close for comfort.

For those of you who have not been paying attention to the news, I am referring to the fact that Earth was not destroyed on Friday by a Giant Killer Asteroid from Outer Space.

At least, as far as I know, it wasn’t.

On Friday morning, a mountain-sized 4.4-kilometre-wide asteroid, with the menacing name Florence, was supposed to zip by about seven million kilometres from Earth, which is a mere 18 times the distance from our planet to the moon, which, astronomically speaking, is pretty (bad word) close.

“Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began,” is what Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, said in a statement.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: “Gee, Florence seems like a pretty lame name for a potentially lethal asteroid. Was it named after the woman who played the mom on The Brady Bunch?”

I agree it would be anticlimactic to be wiped out by something named Florence, but the name pays tribute to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, which also seems a bit ironic.

Anyway, if you are reading today’s column, then — HOORAY! — I will assume Florence whizzed by and did not turn the planet into a smouldering lump of carbon.

If you are not reading today’s column, chances are you no longer need to worry about returning your neighbour’s lawnmower, if you catch my subtle drift.

You will not be surprised to hear that outer-space experts said there was nothing to worry about.

“Certainly not for the next several centuries, and not likely over the next many millennia either,” Chodas claimed. “It’s possible this asteroid could threaten our planet in the far distant future, but it’s unlikely.”

Ha, ha, ha! You know when we should start worrying? I will tell you when we should start worrying. We should start worrying the moment experts tell us there is nothing to worry about.

When the experts tell you the planet will NOT be destroyed by a doomsday space rock, it means you should not be buying any green bananas.

But what really bothers me is the timing of this interstellar near-miss.

It’s bad enough when a Giant Killer Asteroid cruises by this close to Earth, but what genius thought this would be a good thing to schedule for the beginning of a holiday weekend?

I mean, there you are, lying on your dock in cottage country, eking out the last bit of warmth from the late summer sun, enjoying an ice-cold adult beverage, when you look up in the sky and there, hurtling towards your forehead, is a space rock the size of Brandon with your name on it.

Your wife (frowning): “What’s wrong, honey?”

You (staring at the sky): “It just occurred to me, sweetheart, that I wasted a lot of money buying tickets for the Labour Day Classic, plus we will probably not live long enough to see the Jets win the Stanley Cup.”

Your wife (handing you another beer): “That’s a shame, dear.”

The point is, assuming we are still currently alive, we can no longer rely on the experts to save us from a cosmic catastrophe. No, we need to rely on a higher power, by which I mean Hollywood, which has been rescuing the planet from rogue space debris for decades.

I am thinking here of the blockbuster 1998 film Armageddon, wherein an asteroid the size of Texas is on a collision course with Earth and our only hope is for a misfit band of deep-drilling experts headed by Bruce Willis to blast off in a souped-up space shuttle and blow the asteroid up from the inside with extremely bad acting.

In the heart-wrenching finale, Ben Affleck is picked to stay behind and detonate the bomb manually, but just when we think there will be a happy ending and Ben will be reduced to a handful of Timbits, Bruce rips off Ben’s air hose, shoves him back inside and tells him he’s the son he never had and he should marry his daughter, Liv Tyler, after which (surprise) Bruce pushes the button and sees his life pass before his eyes in a heart-tugging montage.

The good news is that, if you are currently nursing a post-holiday-weekend hangover, then Florence whizzed by without blowing up the planet, or Ben Affleck, and will not come this close to us again for centuries.

The bad news is you have nothing to worry about.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca