Never mind 2012, it was almost 1883.
In a rare intersection of Science #FAIL and “Crap, that was close!”, scientists have re-analysed the findings of Mexican astronomer, José Bonilla, who, in 1883, spotted over 450 fuzzy looking objects passing in front of the sun. Back then, Bonilla was unable to explain what they were, and even suspected a flock of birds or swarm of bugs interfering with his readings.
Uh, actually not. Modern analysis of his recordings have revealed that the fuzzy objects were more likely billions, if not trillions of tonnes of comet debris passing less than 650 km from the surface of the earth. “Meh,” you say, “that’s miles away!” No, that’s a hair’s breadth in cosmic terms. The International Space Station is only 250km closer than the trajectory of the comet cloud, and given the scale of what Bonilla reported seeing, there was enough debris shaving past us to obliterate all life on earth had the trajectory been even a millimeter different.
The science of near-earth object (NEO) detection is being refined every year. The NEOWISE project, that detects NEOs, such as asteroids and comets, using infra-red scanning, reports that there are roughly 19 500 objects around us of a size (over 100m in diameter) that could cause a problem should their galactic wandering bring them too close to the third rock from our sun, and that’s just the 19 500 they can detect. As the Bonilla case shows, it’s far from an exact science.
