Image via Shutterstock / Marko Aliaksandr //

Did anyone have this on their bingo card for 2022?

In between torrential floods, underwater volcanoes and ever-persistent global pandemics, the cosmos is still finding ways to slam us with plenty of existential dread, with the largest comet ever observed detected to be heading right at Earth.

Designated C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), the comet has a diameter of 130km along with an estimated mass of 500 trillion tonnes. Add in the fact that it’s hurtling through space at around 35,000 kmh, and well, you’ve got a cataclysmic behemoth on your hands.

To put things in perspective, the famous Halley’s Comet has a diameter of 11km and Comet Hale–Bopp, which has popped up around Earth a bunch of times since its discovery in 1995, has a diameter of 60km. So this one is bloody huge by comparison, and would most certainly screw up life on Earth as we know it.

Thankfully, it looks like the comet won’t end up reaching us, with NASA stating that the closest it’ll get is 1.6 billion km away from the sun in the year 2031. Still, it’s a bloody scary sight to behold. Check it above, and revisit the nightmare-inducing comet scene from 1998’s Deep Impact below for some extra existential dread.