Space is an exceedingly random place. Everything in the known
universe may be governed by some pretty hard laws of physics,
but so are BBs in a jar when you shake them up and down. That
doesn’t stop things from getting very chaotic inside. The same
extreme arbitrariness is worth keeping in mind as we contemplate
our planet’s close brush with an asteroid this week. (FROM THE
ARCHIVES: Asteroids: Whew!) As TIME reports in this week’s issue
(available to subscribers here), astronomers have known for the
better part of a year that asteroid 2012 DA14—a medium sized,
150 ft (50 m) rock weighing 143,000 tons—was closing in on us.
They knew that it would miss us too, by 17,200 miles (27,700
km). That seems like a big number, but in a solar system
measured in billions of miles and a universe measured in
billions of light years, it vanishes to inconsequence. The fact
is, the odds of our getting clobbered by the rogue rock were in
some ways the same as its missing us—at least when you fold into
the equation how little i