Gone... somewhere.
Buy hey, space is a very big place which has no boundaries.
A teacher at intermediate taught us the word "infinite" because that is what space is.
We could not grasp that concept because surely, everything has to have a start and a finish.
There must be a wall way out there many billions of light years away and yeah, maybe there is.
But there has to be something on the other side of any wall doesn't there?
One kid had a great theory and the teacher applauded his imaginative input - he reckoned if you headed straight out in space and kept going in that very same direction then eventually you would somehow arrive back where you started.
"Like there is no end sir... just a beginning."
We were all mightily impressed because this was the same kid who thought what we all knew as Bare Island off Waimarama was part of the Chathams.
I recall one of the lads put him right by remarking "it's actually part of the Kermadecs."
But he had space sorted.
He's probably working for NASA now, and if he is he will surely be enjoying the challenge of trying to peer into the crystal ball called the universe.
For there is a lot of it out there, and as the meteorite watchers noted during the latest close call, trying to pick the course and ultimate intention of these wayward great rocks is not easy.
In the vacuum of space they travel until they hit something and stop... that's pretty well that.
Buy hey, they're working on it and they've even set up a Planetary Defence Co-ordination Office and have boosted the budget for tracking asteroids and other "near Earth objects" to $50 million.
Which isn't bad considering the initial budget just seven years ago was $4 million.
Congress, and the White House, had identified the need to build some sharper "anything heading this way?" binocular sets.
Mind you, in a recent report centred around those "near-Earth objects" it was somewhat unsettlingly noted that "despite this effort to track space rocks and warn the public scientists can still miss impacts".
Which they did in September when a fast moving fireball exploded spectacularly over
Thailand.
One meteor expert spoken to said "for sporadic fireball meteor events like this one there is no warning sign".
And back in February one went into the sea off Brazil and released energy roughly equivalent to about 13,000 tonnes of TNT.
Who needs fireworks?
And the real kicker is that NASA detects about 1500 "near-Earth objects" every year, and that it is estimated that between the years of 2019 and 2105 there are likely to be 50 potential impacts upon the planet.
A chap with astronomy nous told me many years ago that if something barely the size of a football were to hit a house it would likely tear it to shreds due to its velocity.
He also showed me the molten remains of an object that struck the Bay about 10 years back... tore a neat little path across a paddock and thankfully missed livestock.
Would have been like a skyrocket but "a hundred times brighter and bigger" he said.
Space things fascinate me.
Especially since there are something like 40,000 dodgy bits of flotsam and jetsam orbiting about up there on the edge of the atmosphere and beyond.
When you see a disintegrating meteorite coming in you never forget it.
I've see one and it was remarkable.
Sadly it was out at sea so no chance of scooping up some smouldering shreds and sticking them on Trade Me.
Oh, and I've just learned that Japanese scientists have discovered a very large cave on the moon and reckon it would be a perfect nest for earthlings to set up base camp within as it is protected from harmful rays and falling junk.
Sounds cool... count me in.