New found ASTEROID *MAY* f**king HIT EARTH IN 2032

Sensational headlines! Will we be lucky enough to watch as humanity is blighted out by the rocky hand of the Cosmos? Maybe. Maybe not. But who fucking cares how possible it is, when writing about it gets the blood pumping! A fear boner! Carpe Diem! Let’s all the pizza we want, and dance in the streets with our genitals greeting the open winds! ‘

Shutdown, Obamacare, Syria… who cares—while Humanity wastes time in political shitslinging and unnecessary wars, a team of Ukranian astronomers have discovered a massive asteroid that has a real chance of hitting Earth in 2032 with apocalyptical consequences. It’s the second time in history that an asteroid makes it to the top of NASA’s space danger list as a potential danger.

Named 2013 TV135, this giant 1,350-foot-wide minor planet will reach Earth on August 26, 2032. It has a Torino Scale rating of 1, which means that it “merits careful monitoring.”

Scientists don’t know if this asteroid will hit our planet yet. Most probably it will not, but they will have to keep monitoring it until they have a more precise calculation of its trajectory. If it hits Earth, it would unleash an energy of 2,500 megatons of TNT—”50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated.” That’s enough to destroy a state like New York and change the climate all around the world.

Only another much-smaller asteroid—2007 VK184—has the same Torino scale rating. But that doesn’t mean there may not be others. Even if none of these two asteroids hit Earth, there are many more lurking out there, undetected because governments are not putting enough resources in early alert systems. If there’s a space program that needs to be funded worldwide—and in a big way—is the one that may be able to prevent an extinction event at one point in the future. If we don’t, we will not have a second chance.

[io9]