tomtaylor.co.uk

Mankind’s impending mass extinction from a heavenly fireball used to be a regular story in the media, with newspapers jumping over each other to inform us that “experts believe” that there is a “possibility” that “something may hit us in 20xx”.

Thankfully, the media seems to have tired of this story, but the supposed threat remains no less. Every second, rocks, mostly very small, whizz past, some frazzling in the atmosphere, and some missing by millions of kilometers.

Those fine folk at NASA run the Near Earth Object database keeping track of the relatively large ones, including a special section for those that actually, possibly, might hit us.

Of course, this celestial activity is regular and mostly harmless, but completely invisible and as a bit of a space geek, I find it fascinating. So, a couple of weeks ago, I knocked together a Twitter bot called Low Flying Rocks, that scrapes data out of the NASA NEO database, twittering whenever a rock passes within 0.2 AU of the Earth. It seems to speak a few times a week, so don’t expect a constant stream of impending doom.

For me, it’s a simple way of reminding me of the fragility of life here and keeping a finger on the pulse of the universe.