This morning, at 8:52 am, Mountain Daylight Time, 250 grams of Asteroid Bennu struck Earth in the Great Salt Lake Desert … at a speed of approximately 11 miles per hour. No crater was formed by its impact. In this SPECIAL episode, we’ll go deeper into asteroids as potential Black Swans. I’m Joe Kornowski. 

As part of my situational awareness practice, I was scanning the news headlines early this morning and got hooked by a headline about how NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission “will stop” the Asteroid Bennu from shattering Earth … in 160 years. Sometimes scanning the news is like walking the floor of a gambling casino. I should have kept walking this morning, but I stopped and put a quarter in the Asteroid Bennu machine.

Actually, the article’s subhead was what hooked me. It said, “There’s a higher chance of the asteroid striking the Earth than you finding a four-leaf clover. Scientists have 160 years to deflect it.”

Well, … I put in my quarter. I read the whole article. Immediately afterwards, my inner Black Swan voice said, “Asteroid, paper, scissors.”

So, here’s the deal…

Today, September 24, 2023, this article reported that today will bring “the most anticipated moment” in NASA’s catchily named Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer – OSIRIS-REx. 

This big moment they’ve been waiting for is NASA’s version of a FedEX delivery: 3 years ago they briefly landed a spacecraft on the Asteroid Bennu, scooped up about 250 grams of dirt, and stuck it in a return box to Earth traveling at 28,000 miles an hour for 3 years. It arrived safely today by parachute in the Utah Test and Training Range.

Man, Wes Anderson has nothin’ on NASA! I turned on NASA-TV right away hoping to see maybe a Space Force fly-over while the NASA band played “Bennu and the Jets.”

I wasn’t far off. As I pulled up NASA-TV, I saw the OSIRIS-Rex Landing Counter display showing “38 minutes” until landing. I tuned in just as Stu Wilie, the NASA recovery team on-scene commander, was telling an interviewer that the greatest hazard for today’s landing was “slipping” — yes, slipping — because of the recent heavy rains. My mind flashed a Monty-Python like scene of giddy recovery team members running toward a landed capsule on the dry lake bed at break-neck speed slipping and sliding in the mud as the parachute canopy slowly draped itself over the capsule and muddy bodies.

My reverie broke as the face of famed Queen guitarist, Brian May, filled the screen. He apologized for not being able to be physically present at the recovery site — even though he WAS on the OSIRIS-REX team. Most people probably don’t know that rocker Brian May actually IS ALSO a noted astrophysicist. He even wrote and recorded a song and music video a few years ago called, “New Horizons” to celebrate NASA’s “New Horizons” spacecraft mission in 2019. He had been a member of the New Horizons team helping with data analysis and stereoscopic imagery.

As I watched the NASA show, I decided to consult my ChatGPT friend, Bot-o’-Bing, on the news article’s statement about Asteroid Bennu striking the Earth in 160 years with greater probability than finding a four-leaf clover — 1/2700 for Asteroid Bennu versus around 1/5000 for the 4-leaf clover. So, just to get a sense of the time and probability scales for catastrophic natural events, I prompted Bot-o’-Bing with the following: what are the top 5 extinction-level catastrophic events with a probability greater than 1 in 2700 over the next 80 years?

In order of most likely to least likely, they are:

1.    Nuclear war — as high as 1/100

2.    Artificial intelligence — potentially 1/500

3.    Pandemic — around 1/2000

4.    Supervolcano eruption — 1/2500

5.    Asteroids — 1/2700 to 3,333 

But here’s the thing about probability and Black Swan events: 

In the words of Nassim Taleb, “do not try to predict precise Black Swans — it tends to make you more vulnerable to the ones you did NOT predict.”

Our lessons learned today — 

1.     NASA probably has the best reality show right now. I mean today was way better than the Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck Liv Tyler film, Armageddon.

2.     In Vegas, probabilities matter – the HOUSE ALWAYS WINS over the long term.

3.     As for predicting Black Swans, don’t! Your luck is better in Vegas — at least you get to decide what game you want to play, and your odds of winning.

4.     I think I’ll plan a visit to Yellowstone National Park before the year is out. I’ve never been.

5.     Look for the opportunities, the positive Black Swans in some of the extinction-level Black Swans. A few thoughts:

·       Looks like there’s still more upside in the big AI stocks, and the market should be hitting bottom this week.

·       Also, You’ll find good deals on N95 masks and hand sanitizer these days.

·       And I just now bought the GQ-GMC-300S Digital Nuclear Radiation Detector/Monitor — now a “lightning deal” at Amazon with 37% off! Plus I had rewards points to apply.

6.     As for asteroids …. meh.