News that Australia Sky Watchers Spy a Killer NEO.
Last Friday evening East Coast Time, Australians recorded a video of a 65 meter wide rubble pile of a Near Earth Object (NEO) flashing by the Pacific basin at nearly 9 km/s (see above) and coming within a very tiny 46,000 miles to impact. What is critical here is that the NEO was only spotted and identified 2009 DD45 at the very last moment and that it is now in an orbit around the Sun that will bring it close repeatedly to the Earth? Will it strike? Unknown. The Sun's heat changes the orbits of asteroids, so does a close pass to the Earth, and the future track of an Apollo asteroids is uncertain to a wide degree. All we can do is make assumptions and wait for the next opportunity to see the object when the sunlight and the orbit of Earth the the Earth-crosser allow. And what would a 65 meter rubble pile do if it strikes? If it hit the Pacific, estimated west of Tahiti, it would have sent a sizable tsunami in all directions, especially against the eastern coast of Australia and norther New Zealand. If it hits land, it is a multi megaton like detonation that sends out molten ejecta to start fires, perhaps around the planet. In brief, an NEO strike is a natural evolutionary moment that has happened millions of times and will again, millions of times. It is how the Earth was constructed. Carbon-based oxygen breathing bipedals swarming along coastlines or at rest in fragile wooden or iron roosts are not a critical part of the dynamic process of planetary bombardment. Can we stop an Oz killer? Nope. Planet killer? Nope? Can we evacuate? Where? It would solve the banking crisis for a few years.
And we have a so-called President who's canceling the space program.
We're doomed.
Where is Dr. Strangelove? We need someone who loves the bomb.
Wonderful reminder of both, the largeness and propinquity of space relative to the smallness and distance (especially) of political men! When Galileo proclaimed that the earth orbits the sun (and not the other way around), it caused quite a stir among the political elite at that time. They could not face themselves as being anything less than the center of gravity. So much so was their plumage ruffled, Galileo was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life and forbidden to speak publicly.
He would be proved right, of course. And none of it made much of a difference to the ordinary people with more immediate parochial concerns. Neither did the migratory birds alter their course. To them, the earth was still flat - if they thought about it at all. And why shouldn't it be so? The definition of anything needs to conform to its function, after all. That's why most of our maps are still patchwork flat. And no one has the power to start or stop the wheel. And those who think they can, make themselves ridiculous – like someone strapping on stilts and claiming to be Mt. Everest.