Neil deGrasse Tyson Says An Asteroid Might Hit Earth The Day Before The Election

October 19, 2020 / Posted by:

Today in Not Now Neil deGrasse Tyson! news, Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that there’s an asteroid heading for earth that could “clip the planet” on November 2nd, the day before the Presidential Election. Not now, NGT, we have enough to worry about without having to endure another one of your painfully nerdy and wildly inappropriate attempts at seduction. Neil went on to say that the asteroid isn’t “big enough to cause harm,” but that doesn’t mean we want it giving us a “special” Native American handshake without our consent!

Neil was probably trying to make some kind of pithy comment about the election, but as usual, Neil was unable to score with one of his high-minded science jokes. According to The New York Post:

An asteroid with a diameter the size of a refrigerator could strike the Earth the day before the November election, according to celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson — but it’s not large enough to do any serious damage.

The famed astrophysicist said the space rock, known as 2018VP1, is hurtling towards Earth at a speed of 25,000 miles per hour and may clip the planet on Nov. 2.

“It may buzz-cut Earth on Nov. 2, the day before the Presidential Election,” he wrote on Instagram.

But he added that the flying object is nothing to lose sleep over since “it’s not big enough to cause harm.”

“So if the World ends in 2020, it won’t be the fault of the Universe,” he said

My condolences to those few dozen Americans with Asteroid 2020 signs on their lawn who thought their candidate actually had a chance for a minute there. Here’s Neil’s post.

The NYP adds:

NASA had previously identified the asteroid rocketing toward Earth, but put its chances of actually striking at less than 1 percent.

“It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size,” the space agency said.

Back in 2018, Neil was under investigation by his employers at Fox, National Geographic, and The American Museum of Natural History (where Neil is the director of the Hayden Planetarium) following two separate allegations of sexual misconduct (not to mention allegations that he drugged and raped a graduate student in 1984). They all must have concluded that the chances of Neil being a creep were equally small. According to The Hollywood Reporter:

The astrophysicist’s science-focused talk show, StarTalk, will return to Nat Geo in April; it had been off the air since November while the investigation was conducted. Cosmos: Possible Worlds, a follow-up to 2014’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, will also air on Fox and Nat Geo, though a date hasn’t been set.

So here’s to hoping that NASA is better at calculating risks than the networks are. Not much we can do to avoid an asteroid, but we definitely have enough evidence to confidently tell NDT he can shove it up his.

Pic: Wenn.com

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