Anksia

Anksia is a book about the evolution of Earth, from the arrival of what is known today as "Bennu, the Asteroid of the Apocalypse" and its influence in the development of a world dominated by artificial intelligence seeking omniscience.

" La sondo OSIRIS-REx eltrovis, ke la asteroido Bennu forpelas "plumojn" - senprecedenca fenomeno, kiu ŝanĝas nian komprenon pri la Suna Sistemo."[2]

The first different news article on Bennu was published worldwide in several newspapers and in many languages:

« The Solar System is a thrilling place. Revolutionary findings in our cosmic neighborhood are released every other day. Amidst so much competition, it is not just any discovery that gets an expert scientist to say he faces “one of the biggest surprises in his scientific career”. Well, that was exactly what Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission said in a NASA news release. A few days after the spacecraft began orbiting the Bennu asteroid, on the 31st December, it observed particle plumes being expelled from an asteroid’s surface for the first time in history. We have seen steam-gushing geysers in moons and even streams of dust being left behind by comets. However, until then, it was believed that asteroids did not do that kind of thing. “Bennu is already surprising us, and our exciting journey there is just getting started.”, said Lauretta, Professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona. Shortly after the initial discovery of particle plumes, on Jan. 6, they observed several more. A decent amount of the particles was ejected to the interplanetary medium; a portion of it returned to the rocky surface due to the gravitational pull; and another part remained in orbit. The next step is to unravel additional details about these particle plumes and identify the event that is causing them. »


Later they understood that the asteroid sprinkled debris as a means of steering and propelling itself, aside from trying to communicate with the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.


Just like Jupiter, which had once been rather small and quite remote, and gravitated at a distance until it acquired enough mass and “decided” to stay in its current orbit, so had Bennu decided to come closer. Yet, while Jupiter took seven hundred thousand years to transform itself from a boulder into a gas giant with eighty moons, Bennu seemed as if it wanted to expedite its meeting with us by a hundred years.

[1] Year 2019

[2] “In 2019, orbiting the asteroid, the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft discovered that the Bennu asteroid expels particle plumes – an unexampled phenomenon which changes our understanding of the Solar System.” [News release issued by NASA]