Near-miss Memes

The cosmic near-miss celebration is strong with this one! NASA mission control room erupting in joy because an asteroid missed Earth by a completely made-up unit of measurement ("gabogotrillion miles") is peak scientific humor. What's even better is using a Jeep Grand Cherokee as the standard unit of asteroid size—because apparently the metric system wasn't random enough. Scientists really do get excited about things not killing us all, but the absurd specificity of "9.26 gabogotrillion" takes this from standard near-miss relief to comedy gold. Next time you survive an apocalypse by an SUV-length, you too can hug your colleagues this enthusiastically!