Things happening is like going into a maze, thinking about the likelihood of such events is like leaving.

Comet C2/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) is making its closest approach to Earth next week. Yahoo News writes:

The comet, called C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) or "K2", has been travelling for millions of years from its home in the frigid outer reaches of the solar system, where the temperature is about -262C.

Reading that makes you think this is some special event having something that has been travelling for millions of years approach us.

I blogged on this before. It is not a special event because we have not been tracking it for millions of years. Rather it has been tracking us. Perhaps for the comet it is a special event to be making its closest approach to Earth finally after all these years. That is assuming that Earth means anything to the comet. We think Earth is important, but its passed many things, perhaps we are not important.

Its this problem of entering a maze. There is only one way to get to where you are in the maze, but now try and get out. There are many choices to make and only 1 sequence of choices gets you back to the entrance.

Likewise there is only one way for the comet once it had strayed into to its new comet orbit to travel for all those millions of years. But there is a bewildering maze of possible events going backwards in time that we would never guess. At the start of today before reading about that comet we would never have thought of it because we are so overwhelmed already with other possible events in our maze.

This problem also occurs at junctions. The number of times a car we are behind turns the same way as us, or blocks us in some way, it is like the universe is conspiring to slow us down. But we need realise the car is only there because it is going somewhere too. And because it is there we are now thinking about it. It wouldn't be there unless it was heading somewhere and chances are its similar to us. They after all are possibly thinking the same thing about us.