The Asteroid Threat
by Rick Donaldson
Reality Check
Filed under: US Military, Science and Technology, Survival, Astronomy
Earth’s Busy Neighborhood
Somewhere out there is a great big piece of rock, with our name on it. Oh, it’s out there, and it’s headed for us. It’s going to slam into the Earth with enough energy to devastate a small country. The problem won’t be that the country is destroyed, but the entire human race and 90% of all other life forms will be eliminated.
That piece of rock is called an asteroid, and it will have what is called an “Earth Crossing Orbitâ€. Regardless of your feelings and belief in “mankindâ€, how we were created, whether by God or by evolution isn’t really very relevant. We can, and in all probability be completely wiped from the face of this planet by such a cataclysm in the future.
Unless we do something about it.
As human beings, we don’t think really about “what’s beyond the atmosphere†on a daily basis and I’d not advocate that you lose sleep over it, however, I would advocate that you start paying attention. Oh, sure some of you will say, “The human race has been here for thousands, perhaps millions of years on this world and we’ve survived other things. So what?â€
Well, it is reasonable that the dinosaurs were wiped out by just such an event, 65 million years ago. It is also just as likely that several other known extinction events occurred due directly to asteroid impacts on our world.
Nothing “devastating†has happened in our known history, but there have been impacts that occurred on this planet that are known about. For instance, Tunguska Russia, at 7:17 AM on June 30, 1908 a massive explosion occurred. The event is sometimes referred to as the Great Siberian Explosion. It wasn’t until nearly twenty years later that people went to the region to examine what happened. It is believed to have been a cometary impact, the comet exploding some distance above the ground with devastating effects.
Meteor Crater in the desert of Arizona is just over a mile across and several hundred feet deep. This even occurred around 50,000 years ago and left a gaping hole in the ground.
The rock was a nickel-iron meteor, believed to be around 526 yards across and weighed in at about 300,000 tons. We’re pretty sure there were people present on the plains of the Americas 50,000 years ago.
Both of these events may very well have been “devastating†had they been over populated cities. We really do not know if people were indeed killed in the Tunguska impact, and of course there’s no evidence of people being present during the impact that left the scar in Arizona.
Why should we “worry� In 2029, on Friday, April 13th an asteroid will pass very close to Earth. It’s name is 2004 MN4, now called by a the grim name Apophis. Apophis for those of you not up on your mythology was also known as Apep, and is the demon of Darkness for the Egyptian Mythos. This demon or god was the opposer of light, thus eventually known in the mythos as the opposer of Ra, or light. He was evil, wont to do evil things to humans and the gods. But this is all mythology and not science.
The fact that there are some massive pieces of rock out there whirling around space in orbits that periodically cross the Earth’s orbit however, is science. Right now, there are probably less than 30 or so scientists world wide who are working on collecting data for Near Earth Asteroids (NEOs) and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), but they have cataloged roughly 2000 out of an estimated 25-50 thousand such objects.
The problem comes from the fact that in the last three days we’ve had not one, but two close calls. Asteroids 2007 EH and 2007 EK narrowly missed (or will narrowly miss) the Earth. Yesterda, 2006 EH was discovered just before it made a swipe as the Earth. It passed within a few Moon-diameters of the Earth, passing between the Earth and moon.
The other rock should swing past us within the next 24 hours. I ran tracks on both of these using one of NASA’s java tools, and all I can say is “Holy COW, that was close.â€
I still haven’t really answered the question about “Why worryâ€, not precisely. We should worry because we can do something about these things. In 1865, we could have done little save stand and watch as the planet was perhaps doomed to destruction by some giant chunk of rock, that humans probably didn’t know about, couldn’t see and couldn’t do a damned thing about. Today, we not only can see them, track them and calculate the exact impact point on the planet should they have our name on them, but we can DO something about them.
We have the technology to boost dangerous, Earth orbit crossing asteroids into a different orbit, thereby protecting something extremely precious. Ourselves, and our world. I’m concerned less about myself than I am my own legacy, my children and grandchildren. My great grandparents probably didn’t think twice about what happens beyond their own generation, but we damned sure ought to be worrying about it.
America, and humankind in general stand up on a great road to the future. Our technology will in short order take us off this world, perhaps to explore Mars within 30-50 years. Beyond that, I can only guess, but human kind can preserve itself and become someday, interstellar travelers if we try hard enough. Sometimes I think people are just too bogged down standing around and waiting for something bad to happen, instead of being proactive enough to make good things happen.
So, write Congress, asking your representatives to consider funding the space program, doing something about potentially hazardous asteroids, and rocks that can doom not only the United States, but the world to a coming dark age that the human race may never recover from. Write the president of the United States. If you live in another country, then write your own governments, asking… no demanding that they take time out of their busy political schedules to actually THINK about the future of the human race.
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