Rock Star

The greatest gift is the present.

Published Thursday, March 16, 2006 by Dave | E-mail this post

Hey, did you guys know there's an asteroid the size of a stadium heading for Earth in 30 years? Cool. Doesn't even sound big, does it? But that's the charm with these pesky asteroids. They don't have to be big. You see, they don't even hit us. We bump into them. The Earth is moving around the sun at about 30,000 miles per hour, and when you smack into something at that speed, you smack good. Bullets only go a few hundred miles per hour. And there's none of this "whooosh.... trail of fire.... big plummeting asteroid as we watch in horror" stuff either. The atmosphere is only about 20 miles thick, so when something plows through it at 30,000 miles per hour or more (depending if it's moving toward or away from us) you don't get to see it coming. It's just BLAMMO.

Apparently it will do some pretty good damage too. Likely to land in the middle of the Pacific and cause tsunamis that make the recent disaster look like a playground pool. Neat what you miss in the news when it's full of hurricanes and Iraq. Anyway, NASA's not really doing anything about it just now. They're busy getting ready to land on the moon... again. Hm. Almost makes one question George W. Bush's priorities on several levels doesn't it? But don't worry, there's time to evacuate. But it'll be a shame losing all the property across the entire West coast of North America. Hey, I'm from Canada... maybe we can load up the Canadarm with some rockets and send it up there to push the asteroid away. Or maybe we can launch a Tim Horton's coffee shop and land it on the rock. The drive thru traffic might cause it to deflect. Oh I'm all out of ideas.

Have a nice day!

6 Responses to “Rock Star”

Anonymous on 1:52 a.m.

Maybe Bruce Willis will save the day! I'm sure he and Ben Affleck can do something...

(I remember seeing trailers for a scifi flick a couple years back, about the chaotic weather that started tearing about the earth after some whack weather-as-weapon idea backfired... thought that would be interesting if it turned out to be a real US Military top secret project that got leaked, but people were afraid of being sued or disappeared so they decided to make it public knowledge by making a popular film about it...)

So, maybe Armaggeddon was their way of neutralizing our reactions to this news? ("Oh, that.. they know how to fix it, they'll just fly some ship out there, explode something on it to deflect it out of the way, and we'll be fine...")

I love reading Larry Niven & co, the Dream Park/Fallen Angels stories that tell stories involving both science and sci-fi fandom, and seem just so possible/plausible as a result.

X.
Anonymous on 9:13 a.m.

Yeesh! Where did you hear about that?
Anonymous on 9:29 a.m.

Yeesh! Where did you hear about that?
Anonymous on 7:44 a.m.

I had to laugh how such a tragic story was told so up beat...haha. Very interesting though...pretty scary...
Anonymous on 4:08 a.m.

Hey I think it is good news. I had heard the hummer was headed for us in 3 years. 30 is much better. Since I live on the water -the Pacific- no less, I was ready to drive up and sleep on Dave's couch. But I heard his carpet smells like mold...
Anonymous on 9:32 p.m.

Actually, Daves place is great. It doesn't smell at all. The only weird thing was this....

I slept on the couch. He slept in his room, in his bed. I woke up wearing what he was wearing before he went to bed, and he appeared in the morning wearing what I was wearing before I went to bed. He let on like nothing happened, but his left eye twitched like crazy when he said he knew nothing about it. He kind of freaks me out sometimes...haha.