It seems that despite NASA's intelligence and all round ground-breaking research, it's still best at shitting people up.
It's not its fault, I guess, it's just that we see certain words and instantly think we're all about to be plunged into a real-life version of Fallout.
This seems to be ringing true, as the organisation has detected two 'space rocks' heading for earth's orbit, but it is not sure if one of them is a comet or an asteroid.
Advert
One of the objects, known to be a comet, will pass Earth from a distance of 66 million miles (106 million kilometres) away, whereas the unidentified object will pass 32 million miles (51 million km) away on February 25.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The former, called C/2016 U1 NEOWISE (not catchy at all), "has a good chance of becoming visible through a good pair of binoculars, although we can't be sure because a comet's brightness is notoriously unpredictable," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Centre for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies.
Advert
Although it will be visible this week in the south-eastern sky shortly before dawn, it appears to be no threat to us, as Conor McGregor has already told it "it'll do nuttin'".
The other unknown 'space rock', called 2016 WF9 (also not very catchy) may also be visible next month after passing under the main asteroid belt and the orbit of Mars.
"The trajectory of 2016 WF9 is well understood, and the object is not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future," NASA said.
Little is known about 2016 WF9 other than it's a big fucker and it resembles a comet, but doesn't have the dust and gas cloud that usually defines a comet.
Advert
Run for the hills!
Featured Image Credit: Creative Commons