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It’s been twelve months since we counted down the last minutes of 2019 and happily shouted “ Happy New Year. ” We did not know so well what awaited us in the days to come.
For those who have lost their livelihood, their health or, most tragically of all, their loved ones, there is no silver lining that could possibly compensate for the overwhelming grief that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused. Or the damage from this year’s oversized wildfires and hurricanes.
Some of us were a bit luckier. Barring the downsides like the need to ration toilet paper or put on pants for your next Zoom meeting, 2020 has been stranger than sad. It really could have been worse, after all.
How much worse? Well, we can be thankful …
Yellowstone supervolcano did not explode
About 640,000 years ago, more than one thousand cubic kilometers (about 240 cubic miles) of rock, earth and trees were hurled high into the sky when a bubble of hot magma and gas blew up a continent in tall.
That same molten rock caldera, now known as the Yellowstone Caldera in North America, is technically overdue for a repeat.
Now, there is a lot of stuff in that word, “technically”. Technically, the last book of the The iron Throne the series is late. But the timing of previous releases is just not a reliable indication of when to expect a sequel.
Yet every tremor and tremor in the national park’s landscape has made people wonder if Another Big One is near.
Last June, a series of ten earthquakes shook the region in rapid succession. And just in October, the steady gush of the geyser known as Old Faithful ceased to be so faithful and fell eerily silent.
No one would have been surprised if Yellowstone had chosen 2020 to explode.
Well, no one, except most of the vulcanologists in the world. Research suggests that the Yellowstone supervolcano was much more active in the deep past and that we should readjust our expectations on when it might explode.
Every time this year is, 2020 wasn’t it.
An asteroid did not hit Earth
All eyes were on a mineral nugget called 2018VP1 earlier in the year, which had a 1 in 240 chance of hitting Earth on U.S. Election Day.
At just 2 meters (around 7 feet) in diameter, 2018VP1 is well below the 140 meters (460 feet) defined by NASA as the bare minimum for rocks that we really need to worry about. It’s a pebble compared to the 10 kilometer monster that wiped out the dinosaurs, and even this one just hit the planet in the worst possible way.
Yet any rapidly moving boulder within 5,000 kilometers of the planet is a good reason to think about the risks we face from dangerous asteroids close to Earth.
On November 13 – a Friday, nothing less – the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) investigation at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii alerted sky watchers to the passage of a rock the size of a small house.
Just 400 kilometers above the Pacific, the sighting set a new record for the closest passage of an asteroid. Worse yet, as it was obscured by the blinding reflections of the Sun, we had no idea that it even existed until hours after it passed.
It wasn’t that we had much to worry about, if it hit. The rock was not much bigger than the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013.
But the close shave indicates that under the right circumstances, we could easily be blinded by an unexpected cosmic sniper. What if we were to be sent back to the Stone Age by an asteroid, 2020 would have made sense, right?
It goes without saying that no asteroids of concern have hit Earth this year. Yay!
We weren’t toasted alive by solar radiation
Betelgeuse is a red giant star over 600 light years away that we all wish would hurry and die, because the resulting light show would be fantastic.
Earlier this year, everyone was a little excited when the star faded away with what we all took to be a suggestive wink. It happened again in August. Were these the first notes of his swan song?
Nope. In at least one case, it was likely an intrusive dust veil – about as exciting as a cloud passing through the sun on a cold winter day.
Then we learned that Betelgeuse was probably a lot younger than she first looked, so wouldn’t go supernova for a long time, and we all turned our attention to other dark topics. If Betelgeuse had exploded, it would still be too far away to do us much harm.
But if the star were a little closer – like only 65 light years away – its death could strip our planet of its ozone and expose us.
Indeed, we no longer have to worry about our own Sun’s frequent explosions of rapidly moving charged particles. Luckily, we have a nice magnetic shield that protects us… that’s always securely in place, right?
It turns out that this year marks the start of the star’s 25th solar cycle. Hip hurray! Right now we’re at a low point in his mood swings, which is nothing so special. We see this kind of lull every 11 years.
Aliens have never invaded
Remember in 2017 when our solar system was visited by a ridiculously fast asteroid?
We still have to triple-check our spelling of “Oumuamua” each time, but since this was the first confirmed visitor from outside our solar system, it wasn’t long before the word “extraterrestrials” was mentioned. Add to the fact that it’s an odd shape and has a reddish color, and it’s a History Channel documentary in the making.
So, to our absolute surprise, it turns out that they weren’t aliens. Go figure it out.
Do not worry; At the end of last year, we had our second confirmed interstellar visitor in the form of a comet called 2I / Borisov, so we regained our hopes.
Astronomers have been watching it closely until 2020, and we’ve learned a lot about the object. It is also a good thing. Given the chaos Earth has endured this year, our planet would be ripe for an alien takeover. No doubt they would even bring their own stash of masks.
The armies of the living dead never rose from the grave
Rarely do archaeologists find intact Egyptian tombs containing sealed sarcophagi that have remained intact for centuries, let alone millennia. But when they do, it’s a source of excitement.
The secrets they contain can show us not only what our ancestors might have looked like, but how they sounded, how they lived and how they died.
But it’s 2020. So when the sealed coffins kept coming this year, we were sure that was how it would all end; in a wave of withered corpses waving their bandages angrily as they raged through the streets, right?
With 2020 officially over, we think we can safely admit that hordes of undead are unlikely to be on their way, and any secrets we find in Egyptian tombs will ultimately benefit the world. ‘humanity.
Let’s just not open graves in January. Just to be sure.
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