Bad Astronomy

Hungry Hungry Asteroid

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about some news media falsely reporting that the asteroid Apophis might hit the Earth in 2036. In that post I used a picture drawn by a friend of mine, Dan Durda, showing an asteroid with a spacecraft near it:

The asteroid is actually a model Dan built based on Eros, a different near-Earth asteroid, and the spacecraft is a possible design of a gravity tug, an idea for a craft that might be able to tow potentially dangerous rocks into safe orbits.

Anyway, BABloggee Kai Baumbach saw something a little different in that picture. He fixed it up and sent it to me:

Aha! I should’ve seen that myself. But what does it mean?

Could this be the first sign of a sub-Saharan river-dwelling mammal on its way to Earth? Are aliens actually herbivorous quadrapeds? Could we be in serious danger from the hypervelocity impact from an artiodactyl?

Hmmm. I think perhaps this sums up my thoughts best: