Near-Earth asteroids discovered per year

From 2010 to 2023, astronomers discovered more near-Earth asteroids each year and the price of a pint rose in British pubs, correlating at 0.9735 across twelve years. The working hypothesis — that expensive lager drives pub-goers outside to stare at the sky and spot asteroids — has not survived methodological scrutiny. The alternative hypothesis, that British drinkers are somehow funding planetary defense, seems equally unlikely but more comforting.

Near-Earth asteroid discovery rates increased dramatically from the early 2010s onward, rising from a few hundred per year to over 2,000 annually by the early 2020s, driven by improved sky survey programs like Pan-STARRS, ATLAS, and Catalina Sky Survey, as well as better data processing pipelines. UK pint prices rose over the same period from around £2.80 to over £4.50, driven by inflation and hospitality cost pressures. Both are monotonically increasing series over a twelve-year window — one measuring investment in astronomical infrastructure, one measuring the economics of British hospitality — and they share only the shape of their growth curves.

A twelve-year window contains enough economic inflation and enough scientific progress to make almost any two growing things look causally linked. The correlation coefficient cannot distinguish between a causal relationship and two clocks both marking the passage of time.