Saturday, July 01, 2006

Lucky miss

I'm not sure where I read it, but I'm sure there was a piece last week on the work that was being done to make sure an asteroid, headed kind of in our direction, and due in about 23 years, would be diverted or blown up before it reached our neighbourhood. 23 years is a fair way away - and the asteroid must be a considerable distance from us at this point - so there's plenty of time to make a plan and carry it out. Hopefully the plan will not result in various parts of said asteroid falling down on Planet Earth because of the intervention. Would they shoot it from space; shoot it in space; land on it and plant explosives? Any number of movie scenanios come to mind.
Of course, if you wanted to be worried about asteroids falling on us, and were after a more immediate threat, there's always this coming week, when an asteroid is supposed to miss us by a mere 430,000 kilometres. 2004 XP14 (discovered in ... 2004) does not pose a threat - nor, it seems, do the other at least 113 asteroids and 20 comets discovered in a search to confirm that XP14 was not a threat. Phew!

1 comment:

Purple Sea Urchin said...

This gives the term being "stoned" an entirely new meaning altogether..