Somehow I missed Mike Brown’s recent thoughts on 2003 EL61, the oddly elongated Kuiper Belt object that’s as big as Pluto along its longest dimension. Fortunately, the BBC recently covered the story. At the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Brown (Caltech) had discussed the instability of the object’s orbit, pointing out that it is headed for an eventual encounter with Neptune. A possible outcome: Two million years from now, 2003 EL61 may be a comet. “When it becomes a comet,” says Brown, “It will be the brightest we will ever see.”