It has been twelve months of counting the final minutes of 2019 and happily saying ‘Happy New Year’. We were unaware of what was meant for us in the coming days.
For those who have lost their livelihoods, their health or, most tragically, their loved ones, there is no silver lining that could possibly compensate for the heavy mourning caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. Or the damage caused to this year’s forest and storm.
Some of us have been a bit more fortunate. Ration was more awkward than mournful, except for inconveniences like needing toilet paper or putting on pants for their next Zoom Meeting 2020. It really could have been worse, after all.
How bad? Well, we can be grateful…
The Yellowstone Supervolcanoes did not explode
Roughly 640,000 years ago, more than a thousand cubic kilometers (about 240 cubic miles) of rock, dirt, and trees were thrown high in the sky when a bubble of magma and hot gases blew a continent wide open.
The same caldera of molten rock, known as the Yellowstone caldera in North America, is technically overdue for a dual display.
Now, a lot is filled in that word, ‘technically’. Technically in the last book game of Thrones The series is overdue. But the timing of previous releases is not just a reliable indication of when to expect a sequel.
Nevertheless, every tremor and aftershocks of the National Park landscape have surprised people if another older person is close.
This past June saw a dozen earthquakes shake off quick succession in the region. And just this October Geier’s old tick-bitch known as Old Faith was so believable and suspiciously quieted.
One would not have been surprised if Yellowstone chose 2020 to explode.
Well, none except for most of the Vulcanologists in the world. Research suggests that if anything, the Yellowstone Supervolcano was much more active in the deep past, and we should read our hopes for when it might fly.
Whenever that year happens, 2020 was not so.
An asteroid did not slam into the Earth
All eyes were set on a nugget of minerals called VP1 in 2018, which had a 1 in 240 chance to explode the Earth on US election day.
Barely 2 meters (about 7 feet) across the 2018VP1, a 140-meter (460 ft) well falls as a bare minimum for NASA rocks that we really need to worry about. It is a pebble compared to a 10-kilometer behemoth that wiped out dinosaurs, and even happened to hit the planet in one of the worst ways.
Nevertheless, any fast-growing boulder that falls within 5,000 kilometers of the planet has a good reason to think about facing dangerous threats near Earth’s asteroids.
On November 13 – one Friday, no less – the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Final Alert System (ATLAS) survey at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii alerted sky-goers to exceed the size of a small house.
At just 400 kilometers in the Pacific, the observation set a new record for the nearest pass to the asteroid. Worse, since it was in the grip of the sun’s glare, we had no idea that it existed even after hours had passed.
Not that we had to worry too much about it, it was a hit. The rock was not much larger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which became famous in Russia in 2013.
But a close shave indicates that under the right conditions we can be easily blinded by an unexpected cosmic sniper. And if we were going to explode by an asteroid back in the Stone Age, it would have made sense in 2020, right?
Needless to say, there is no asteroid of any concern on Earth this year. Wow!
We were not alive by solar radiation
Betelgeuse is a red giant star more than 600 light years away that we all wish would die as quickly as possible, because the resulting light show would be spectacular.
Earlier this year, everyone had a strange excitement when the star got all of us ready for a thoughtful wink. It happened again in August. Were the first notes of its swan song?
No. In at least one instance, it was probably an intense veil of dust – as exciting as a passing cloud of sun on a cold winter day.
We then found out that Betelgeus was probably a lot smaller than it first looked, so the supernova wouldn’t last long, and we all focused our attention on other sad topics. If Betheluse had exploded, we still had a lot of damage to do.
But if the star was exactly 75 light years away – then its death could snatch our ozone planet and expose us.
Actually, we worry about our Sun’s frequent rapid charge particles spreading. Thankfully we have a good magnetic shield protecting us… which is still safely in place, right?
This year it only happens to mark the beginning of the star’s 25th solar cycle. Hip hooray! Right now we are at the low point of its mood, which is nothing special. We see this kind of lullaby every 11 years.
Aliens never attacked
Remember back in 2017 when our solar system was visited by a ridiculously fast asteroid?
We still have to check the spelling of ‘Oumuamua’ every time, but as it was first confirmed from outside our solar system, it wasn’t really long before the word ‘alien’ was mentioned. . Throw in the fact that it is a strange shape and has a red color, and is a History Channel documentary in the making.
So, to our complete and utter surprise, it turns out that it was not aliens. go figure.
not to worry; At the end of last year we had our second confirmed interstellar visitor in the form of a comet named 2I / Borisov, so we again got our hopes up.
Astronomers have kept a close watch on it until 2020, and we have learned a lot about the object. This is a good thing, too. Given that the Earth is set to collapse this year, our planet will be ripe for an alien takeover. There is no doubt that they will also bring their own supplies of masks.
Murray’s army never rose from the grave
It is rare that archaeologists find Egyptian tombs containing sealed sarcophagi that have remained untouched for centuries, let alone Milia. But when they do, it causes excitement.
The secrets they contain can make us not only look like our ancestors, but how they look, how they live, and how they died.
But it is 2020. So while the sealed coffin kept coming in just this year, we were certain that it would be finished this way; A wave of desiccated corpses raged through the streets as angrily waving their bandages, right?
With the end now officially over, we think we can safely accept that it is unlikely that the horses of the dead are on their way, and all the mysteries we find in the tombs of Egypt will eventually lead to humanity Will benefit
Come on, though no graves will open in January. Just for the comfort.
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