What? You Mean The Earth Is Not In Danger?

So, it's kind of just a given that an asteroid is going to coldcock the planet and we'll all go the way of the dinosaurs.

Although, now that I say it that way, it kind of makes me sad for the dinosaurs. Think of them, standing around, minding their own business--maybe munching on a smaller dinosaur or something--and then it's like "Hey, what's that bright light in the sky? And what's that noise? And, is it suddenly getting kinda hot--"

WHAM! No more dinos. They probably didn't even understand it. And the ones that initially lived were like, "Oh shit! What just happened? Why is there so much smoke and fire? I gotta getthehellouttahere, man!" Sad.

But I digress.

I know you've heard about the asteroid that was on course to smash into the Earth in 2040. It's what keeps the Syfy Channel so fully stocked in epic movies that, even if an asteroid were to be on a collision course with our planet, we'd have about a million earth-saving ideas to choose from.

Anyway, like I was saying, it's just pretty been much a fact that, according to scientists who know, we have a pretty good shot at being asteroided in 2040 by Asteroid 2011AG. (Well, okay. What they really said was that there was a slight chance. But that's not very dramatic. So just go with it, okay?)

Well now, apparently, according to this article, that's not gonna happen at all.

My first thought was Yay!

But then, I started thinking. "Hey wait a minute... If they said it was gonna hit us, and now they say it's not, what does that mean?" I'm envisioning black-suited government agents rolling up the the observatories and stating in a menacing monotone, "Knowing an extinction event is about to happen is not good for orderly society, don't you think? I think you ought to recheck your information. That asteroid's not going to hit the Earth after all, is it? You were wrong, weren't you?"

Perhaps those same men in black are the ones who will "silence" those who insist the public has a right to know? Perhaps they will be the ones who hold back the mob of panicked civilians (by any means necessary) while government officials all over the world and their hand-picked chosen few are loaded into interstellar arks to escape the destruction and begin colonizing other planets?

Oh wait. That actually was a Syfy movie, wasn't it?