Time Travel

You might have missed the story in the last few days about the launching of a NASA probe with the objective of smashing into an asteroid and knocking it ever so slightly off course—as a practice run.  

The probe is expected to travel 6 million miles and is scheduled to crash into the asteroid after a 6 month journey as it smashes into the space rock at 15,000 miles per hour. Talk about speeding.

The asteroid as it is poses no threat to planet Earth. It is merely being used as target practice should the need ever truly arise that Earth needs to be saved from a speeding asteroid headed right for us.

Apparently there have been some asteroids that have clunked into us and proved Chicken Little right, the sky was falling, causing some major league damage. The WSJ story by Robert Lee Hotz tells us that "in 1908 a mysterious space rock exploded over Siberia and leveled 830 square miles of forest. In 2013, a 65-foot asteroid blew apart 20 miles above Chelyabinsk, Russia, That airburst released more than 30 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It knocked people off their feet and blew out windows in thousands of buildings." 

Most asteroids that do tumble toward Earth burn up before they enter our atmosphere. It is a good thing, because there might be politicians who would build a "space wall" to keep the interlopers out. Think what that would cost, and Mexico likely would have no part of it.

There is good news in all of this. A Near Earth Object Surveyor is scheduled for launch in 2026 designed to find "near -Earth asteroids large enough to cause regional damage," said Dr. Mainzer, who heads the project. "The question is to answer what could happen in the next 100 years. We hope the answer is nothing." Good news for the great-great-great... grandchildren who haven't yet been born. 

But there is Sword of Damocles hanging over someone's head. Asteroids 6 miles across or larger, like the one that wiped out most dinosaurs and torched much of the planet about 66 million years ago, are believed to strike only every 15 million years or so." (If I read this right, then there have been several cataclysmic events since 66 million years ago. But we're not going to beg for details, or confirmation.)

I'm not sure if the clock starts now on that 15 million year count, but if it does, then there are people (assuming there will still be people) who 14,962, 979 years from now who might see someone holding a sign telling them "The End is Near." who are really in danger of facing the Apocalypse. Tell someone planning a family in 14,965,000 (what's that in Roman numerals?) that their children won't be around long enough to give them grandchildren and there might very well be worldwide panic.

The really good news might be that credit card debt, car loans and mortgages will come due after the Big Event, leaving a LOT of people off the hook, but probably dead and unable to enjoy their new found financial freedom.

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