XKCD Comic #3049 "Incoming Asteroid" https://xkcd.com/3049/ explanation from ExplainXKCD https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3049:_Incoming_Asteroid This comic may be inspired by the recent discovery of asteroid 2024 YR4, which is estimated to have about a 2% chance of striking earth in 2032. Its size is estimated to be 40-90 meters (bad news for the area around the city). This comic provides a log scale correlating the size of any incoming asteroid to whether its arrival is good or bad news. While asteroids on the smaller end of the scale are good news for sky watchers, as the upcoming objects get bigger the potential for catastrophe grows. Many astronomy enthusiasts would be happy to see bigger meteors, as bigger generally means more exciting pictures. Of course, once the meteors grow past a certain size even the most enthusiast astronomer might grow concerned about their imminent extinction... The joke in the last line is that once an asteroid grows past a certain size, it is less of a question of the object hitting earth and more a question of earth hitting a bigger planet. Ouch.