Gerrard Kaonga
A video has started doing the rounds on social media showing an asteroid crash landing on Jupiter, and it has people seriously freaking out.
Interestingly enough, the video of the asteroid strike isn't a simulation but rather from a real-life event that happened back in 1994.
Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 provided the first observable collision between two solar system objects and naturally was studied by astronomers worldwide.
The comet was pulled apart by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and turned into a series of smaller fragments ranging up to 2km in diameter before making contact.
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These 21 fragments collided with the planet between July 16 and July 22 at a speed of approximately 60km/s.
These weren’t some soft taps striking the massive gas giant either... it is estimated they struck the planet with the force of 300 million atomic bombs, and impact plumes reached 1,900 to 3,000km high.
People on social media are understandably thankful that Earth doesn’t find itself in these kinds of situations too often. In fact, extinction-level-event asteroids are kept away from the Earth because of planets in our solar system like Jupiter.
With that said, people on Reddit have begun getting retrospective about just how fickle our solar system safety is in the grand scheme of things.
One Reddit user said: “Imagining how big that asteroid is is scary. Compared to Jupiter... you know, the biggest planet we have.”
Another user got really reflective after watching the brief clip and said: “Yes! The scariest thing for me is this: the universe just keeps ticking along as if nothing happened. I've always thought of the extinction of humanity as an event that would leave a lot of relics, a lot of things to be dug up in millions of years by other forms of life.
“But from this video, maybe not. The sum total of all of our history, culture, and knowledge could be here one low resolution frame and gone the next. No one in the universe would even know.”
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With another coming to similar conclusions and going: “Freaks me out thinking one day earth will be 100% gone. Every thing ever made, thought of, experienced will just not exist.
“And then even further (much further,) down the line the universe probably won't even exist. “We get such a small amount of time to witness the beauty of what the universe has created and for the most part we spend it so poorly.
“And now im full of existential dread. Thanks reddit!
And in contrast, another simply said: “Life is terrifying.”