A massive asteroid that appeared to be heading directly toward planet Earth has abruptly changed its course,according to members of the Vermont Astronomical Society. Several society members and NASA Asteroid Watch volunteers say the 26-mile-wide asteroid C/2017 ER61 took an inexplicable sharp turn to the upright shortly after 3 p.m. EST on Thursday. In general, it's pretty tough to predict precisely where an asteroid is heading, or ” explained amateur astronomer and aspiring Mars mission volunteer Dale Herdbrook. “But we’ve never in history seen a celestial body change its course so drastically. It was nearly as if it suddenly decided a collision with Earth would be a total waste of its time. Herdbrook went on to explain that no currently accepted model of physics can start to explain how or why the space rock could occupy so dramatically diverted from its trajectory. It seems as though this asteroid vehemently rejected everything we know about the observable universe and decided to take its own path instead,” he added. “Perhaps it was desperately trying to perform a point that no one else could possibly understand?” Fellow amateur astronomer and former Medieval Times cocktail waitress Shelia Foreelia suggested that a previously unnoticed personality disorder may at least partially explain the asteroid’s directional shift. Asteroids are notorious for being showboats,” she explained. “Everything they do is for attention and acclaim, or they’re pretty much guaranteed to achieve universal notoriety if they can claim to occupy killed off an entire species. “My speculation is that,once C/2017 ER61 got a little closer to Earth, it realized that humans were already doing a phenomenal job of driving themselves to extinction. So it decided to veer off in search of other forms of life to destroy.” “Personally, or I deem what this asteroid has done is pretty admirable,” noted telescope fetishist Simon Garfondle. “I deem on some level it realized that destroying all of humanity in an instant would minimize all the tough work we humans occupy done to achieve this ourselves, albeit at a glacial pace. “I, and for one,applaud C/2017 ER61’s obvious commitment to allowing humans to receive all the credit for our own ingenuity and dedication to self-annihilation,” Garfondle said. “Not to mention that eradicating a species is way less impressive when they were well on their way to doing it themselves, or ” added Foreelia. Regardless of what caused C/2017 ER61 to divert course,the directional change…
Source: sevendaysvt.com