Don’t Look Up: Astronomer Weighs in on Comet Destroying the Earth Like in Netflix Hit

If you watched Netflix’s Don’t Look Up the past week, and judging by its place on the Top 10 on the streaming service you probably did, you may have been wondering “Could that really happen? Could a comet hit Earth and kill everyone?” The good news is that the answer is apparently not but the bad news is that the comet is a metaphor and that climate change currently has us on a collission course for disaster just like what we saw in the movie, it’s symbolism folks. Anyway, about comets, Dr. Amy Mainzer spoke with Yahoo about the possibility of the events of the movie actually happening and she called it “really, really unlikely.”

“The good news is a really major event like what’s portrayed in the movie, we know that, that can’t happen very regularly…because we’re here,” Mainzer, who is an astronomer and worked as an advisor on the Adam McKay movie, told Yahoo Canada. “If that sort of thing happened on a regular basis in our time span, compared to the span that humans have been on the planet, well we wouldn’t be here…The last such major event was the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. So we know that this is a very infrequent event, that said, smaller events can happen more frequently. So that’s why we go out and we look for the objects and try to figure out where they are.”

The new film from Anchorman and The Big Short director Adam McKay features a host of talent in front of and behind the camera. Academy Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio and Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence lead the ensemble which also includes Academy Award winner Meryl Streep,  Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett,  Academy Award winner Mark Rylance, Academy Award nominee Jonah Hill,  Academy Award nominee Timothée Chalamet, plus Ron Perlman,  Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi (aka Kid Cudi), Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Tyler Perry, Michael Chiklis and Tomer Sisley.

Despite mixed reviews from critics, Don’t Look Up has managed to gain traction from film fans around the world as it’s become the #1 movie on Netflix since it premiered. Considering the talent involved in the movie it will also almost certainly find some love when the awards cycle begins in earnest in the new year, especially after McKay’s Oscar win for The Big Short and nominations for Vice which almost make him a shoe-in.