On a slow news day find E.T.'s space ship

Today is a slow news day, at least on the space beat. There's no Moon for you (although the President wants to study Mars) so let's see what the Hubble space telescope is up to.

Look, up in the sky! Could it be...a spaceship? (Picture from NASA and UCLA.)

NASA insists it's not. It's an asteroid collision, they speculate. They estimate its size at 460 feet, or 140 meters, in diameter, hitting another object at 11,000 miles per hour.

Here comes the money quote:

"If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight,"

Notice the word "if" there? "If" is such an intriguing word, is it not? One can do a lot with one if. Politicians have turned the President of the United States into a foreigner with a single "if."

What would you do with this "if?" Is it E.T.'s spaceship? Is it the contrail of the Enterprise, come to save our whales? Did the Death Star just get blown up by the rebel alliance?

Of course it's probably an asteroid collision.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com