Mini Moon Madness

You’ve probably heard about the Mini Moon that will be visiting Earth for a few weeks this fall. This is an tiny asteroid named 2024PT5. And boy howdy, the conspiracy theories are oozing out of the woodwork. Everything from, It signals the coming of the Anunnaki to “They” are planting it in the sky to divert our attention from some unnamed nefarious activity they will be engaging in. It’s probably no surprise that many who find 2024PT5 alarming are also believers in a Flat Earth

There are more than 34,000 known near-Earth asteroids and another 120 known near-Earth comets. Now and again one gets too close to the Earth and either burns up in the atmosphere, or crashes on land or water. But every so often, one gets close enough to the Earth, traveling at *just* the right angle to get captured by Earth’s gravity and briefly enters orbit until it escapes again, burns up or crashes.

These objects are generally too small to be seen with the naked eye, so people remained unaware of them before telescopes. But as telescopes have become ever more efficient and sophisticated, they are detected more often.

A few past examples of note:

Petit’s Moon was discovered briefly orbiting the Earth in 1846. It was observed by by French astronomer Frédéric Petit, director of the Toulouse Observatory, Lebon and Dassier at Toulouse, and by Larivière at Artenac Observatory. Photographing celestial objects was extremely rare in those days, and there is no photographic evidence of this one. Some modern astronomers aren’t convinced it existed.

2006RH120 is approximately 2–3 meters across. It approaches the Earth–Moon system about every twenty years, and occasionally temporarily enters Earth orbit. Most recently, it was in Earth orbit from July 2006 to July 2007

WT1190F periodically orbited the Earth between 2009 and 2015. Then in November 2015 it entered the atmosphere and crashed into the Indian Ocean.

2020CD3 orbited the Earth from 2018 to May 2020

It’s just a natural phenomenon that’s been happening regularly since time immemorial, and it will continue happening as long as the Earth exists. So stop with the superstitious nonsense.