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People these days have a lot of things to worry about— their job, bills, the consistently deteriorating state of what used to be a somewhat stable global political climate that seems to continually dive deeper into the madness. You know, the things that normal people deal with on a daily basis.
I’m well aware the last thing you need is another person telling you there’s more bad news out there, and if you’re already depressed from having to be bombarded with articles about the evils of people on every side of the political spectrum, you might want to stop reading. If you’ve decided to keep going— which I’m going to assume you have— I’m afraid I have something terrible to report: there’s a chance you might get hit by a space station this weekend.
We’ve been following this saga for a couple of years ever since the Chinese lost control of its Tiangong-1 space station. Those monitoring the problem realized that the craft was on a collision course with Earth at some point this March, but scientists had no idea where it was going to end up. They’ve made some headway when it comes to figuring out the space station’s trajectory, but it’s not going to be great news for anyone who lives south of Canada.
According to the BBC, Tiangong-1 will enter the Earth’s atmosphere at some point during the weekend, and anyone living between 43º north and 43º south could theoretically be the victim of space debris. However, the majority of the spacecraft should dissolve as it plummets, and one expert said you had the same chance of getting injured as getting hit by lightning twice in the same year.
I’m pretty sure he’s talking out of his ass as far as probability is concerned, but I’m still more than happy to take the reassurance.