It might not look huge from afar, but the level of destruction would be almost impossible to imagine
A jaw-dropping video has been making the rounds on social media. It shows an asteroid slamming right into Jupiter, and to say people are losing it would be an understatement.
What’s wild is that this isn’t some animated rendering or CGI clip. It’s actual footage from a real event that took place back in 1994.
The impact came from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which gave scientists their first chance to witness a direct collision between two space objects in our solar system. Naturally, it became a major moment in the world of astronomy.
The comet didn’t just hit Jupiter in one piece. Its massive body was ripped apart by the planet’s intense gravitational field, breaking into several chunks—some as large as 2 kilometers across—before finally crashing down.
In total, 21 different fragments ended up hitting the gas giant between July 16 and July 22. They weren’t just cruising in gently either. These space rocks came in hot at speeds around 60 kilometers per second.
To put the force into perspective, experts estimate the impacts released energy comparable to 300 million atomic bombs. The resulting plumes of debris shot up between 1,900 and 3,000 kilometers into Jupiter’s atmosphere. That’s the kind of force that leaves a mark.
It didn’t take long for social media users to chime in with their thoughts, and many are just grateful that Earth is usually spared from this kind of chaos.
A lot of that thanks goes to planets like Jupiter, which act like cosmic bodyguards for the inner solar system.
Still, this sparked some deeper thinking on Reddit. People began to reflect on just how fragile our safety is in the big cosmic picture.
One Reddit user shared: "Imagining how big that asteroid is is scary. Compared to Jupiter... you know, the biggest planet we have."
Another Redditor had a pretty heavy reaction to the short clip and commented: "Yes! The scariest thing for me is this: the universe just keeps ticking along as if nothing happened. I've always thought of the extinction of humanity as an event that would leave a lot of relics, a lot of things to be dug up in millions of years by other forms of life."
"But from this video, maybe not. The sum total of all of our history, culture, and knowledge could be here one low resolution frame and gone the next. No one in the universe would even know."
Someone else echoed the same vibe and added: "Freaks me out thinking one day earth will be 100% gone. Every thing ever made, thought of, experienced will just not exist."
"And then even further (much further,) down the line the universe probably won't even exist. " It really puts into perspective just how little time we get to appreciate the wonders of the universe—and how often we let it slip away without a second thought.
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