So, the time has come. Everything is in place. Saturn can't dodge now.

I want to tell you all a little story.

65 million years ago (give or take) something hit the Earth with enough energy to have global consequences. Maybe comet, probably asteroid.

It wiped out many species extant at the time. Including the non-avian dinosaurs.

Where did this impactor come from? Well, if it was an asteroid, it probably began its life in the main asteroid belt.

After drifting around for a while, a resonance with one of the giant planets likely drove it into the inner solar system where it met Earth.

Jupiter is responsible for a lot of these sorts of destabilizing resonances, but Saturn also drives a really important one called nu6.

So what I'm driving at here is that there is a non-negligible chance that Saturn killed the dinosaurs.

Yeah.

So let's look at the Cassini grand finale - slamming a bus-sized interplanetary spaceship into Saturn - in this context.

Planetary protection measure

OR

Symbolic act of cosmic justice for the former residents of planet Earth?

You decide.

"But Alex," you say. "Jupiter could be responsible too."

I give you the Galileo Entry Probe, a relativistic bullet we fired into Jupiter.

"Well, but it could have been a comet," you say.

We got you, T-Rex. Meet Deep Impact, a massive kinetic impactor we slammed into a comet.

Boom. Literally.

So all I'm saying is, if you see a bird on Friday after Cassini slams into Saturn, give them a nod. They know what we did.

They know.