Recently, I watched the movie “Don’t Look Up” on Netflix. I thought that it was a very confusing movie in the beginning but then it started to make some sense.

I asked a friend of mine if he had watched it yet and he told me he had seen it and that it was meant to be a movie that sort of mocks the Republican party. That’s funny because when I watched it, I got the impression that it was mocking the Democrat party.

I won’t spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it yet, but the premise of the movie is that some people discover that there is an asteroid headed toward Earth and has the potential to wipe out the entire planet. That’s all I’ll say about it.

But have you ever considered whether or not there actually will ever be an asteroid that could threaten life on our planet?

Many scientists believe that this will likely be the event that leads to the demise of the human population, but I’m not as pessimistic about humanity. I’m not sure where Elon Musk may settle on the matter, but regardless, he’s planning on taking over Mars.

But according to some astronomers, there may be a “planet killer” asteroid hiding out somewhere behind the sun that may hit our planet one day.

Of the three NEAs discovered, 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27 have orbits that remain interior to Earth’s orbit. 2022 AP7, on the other hand, measuring about 1.5 kilometers wide, has an orbit that may someday place it in Earth’s path, though it’s difficult for scientists to pinpoint exactly when.

Fox News reported,

The asteroid, called 2022 AP7, was among three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), hiding in the inner solar system, the region within the orbits of Earth and Venus. Astronomers have a particularly tough time finding asteroids in this region because of the intense glare of the sun. Still, they managed to find a trio of NEAs because of the more favorable conditions during a brief window of twilight.

Of the three NEAs discovered, 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27 have orbits that remain interior to Earth’s orbit. 2022 AP7, on the other hand, measuring about 1.5 kilometers wide, has an orbit that may someday place it in Earth’s path, though it’s difficult for scientists to pinpoint exactly when.

“Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids,” said Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science and the lead author of the paper describing this work.

“So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call ‘planet killers,’” he said.

Sheppard noted that there are likely only a few NEAs of similar size left to find, and that they have orbits that would impact the Earth.

You would think that with the technology we have to monitor what is in space that we would be able to detect any asteroids headed toward our planet, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Practically every single year we discover asteroids of various sizes that we don’t discover until they reach their nearest point. In fact, that happened four times in 2020 and once last year.