Shutdown Apocalypticism Watch: OMG WE MIGHT BE HIT BY AN ASTEROID!

Alarmist story of the day

The so-called shutdown has prompted a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric, but I'm not sure that any claim outdoes the idea that Lucia Graves debunks here:

Has the shutdown ruined our ability to detect asteroids? Not really. But that hasn't stopped publications around the Web from running alarmist headlines suggesting as much.

"NASA Shuts Down 'Asteroid Watch' In Wake Of US Government Crisis" reads a story published by HuffPost UK. "NASA asteroid watch closes due to government shutdown," reads another. "If an asteroid starts hurtling toward Earth," wrote one [CNN] reporter in a recent story, "…well…good luck."

The alarmist stories are based on a single tweet from NASA's Near Earth Object Office's @AsteroidWatch twitter account.

While some of those posts make clear lower down in the story that their headlines are actually about nothing more than the temporary closing of a twitter account, others never get there or maybe don't even realize it. The fact of the matter is that the office remains operational with the exception of social media.

Just for a moment, that "Weimar America" talk doesn't sound so extreme after all.