Ancil
A lot of people are saying the same thing about an asteroid close up, and they’re not even kidding.
This photograph gives an intriguing and detailed view of the surface of the asteroid Ryugu.
Geologists find it utterly fascinating since, as one might expect, it is all quite desolate, bare, and stony.
While it’s fantastic to have such a clear image of an asteroid, many were unsettled by one feature of the photo, though.
Asteroids are stony objects that float through space; the photograph has been hailed as one of the “clearest ever taken” of one of these things.
Ryugu is a very important asteroid, as well as being in a position which makes it potentially dangerous to Earth.
According to NASA, the Cb-type asteroid Ryugu is a near-Earth object with a black surface and a diameter of around 1 kilometer; it is also potentially dangerous. It is considered to be made of water-rich and carbonaceous materials, important key elements that are relevant to life on Earth.
“The study of Ryugu and the returned carbonaceous samples will provide important information about the origin and evolution of the solar system, in particular, the inner planets.”
However, while witnessing such an asteroid up close is interesting, many were unnerved by one aspect.
That this is how dark space actually is.
You might be familiar with footage of the wide sea at night, when there is very little light and thousands of meters of water beneath you.
However, space is far more mysterious and unsettling than that.
The asteroid’s eerie blackness prompted many to express their fears and concerns on social media.
One person wrote: “The black is more interesting than the rocks… It’s just eternal endless darkness,” while another said: “So weird that when you look up at night, you see all the stars, but Astronauts say its pitch black when they are in space. I dont get it.”
And a third added: “Space is cold, dark, empty. This pic is wonderful, though.”
Space exploration isn’t complete without a healthy dose of existential fear.
Despite the incredible isolation and all-encompassing darkness, some astronauts who’ve been as far as humans have ever gone did not feel lonely.
Michael Collins is one such astronaut; he was the command module pilot on Apollo 11.
For forty-eight minutes. After making it to the Moon’s dark side, Collins became the most alone human in the cosmos.
Despite this, he said he felt ‘awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation’.
