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The
Dangers of Asteroids Have you ever looked to the sky and saw a shooting star? What are the chances that one could hit and kill you? Actually, you're more likely to get trampled by elephants. But the beautiful streaks of fire that you see are made by rocks the size of pebbles. They harmlessly burn up in our smog-filled atmosphere. But what happens if one is big enough to hit the ground before it burns up? Some scientists believe there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth. In fact, quite frequently, they do collide. In 1908 an object only several hundred feet in diameter struck Tunguska in Russia, leveling thousands of miles of forest with a blast thousands of times as powerful as nuclear bomb. Good thing it hit shitty, underdeveloped Russia and not a more civilized place. A few decades ago, there was another incident concerning an asteroid. While watching TV in her house, a small meteorite came crashing through the roof and struck a fat lady (you know, the kind of porker that destroys cars if hit by one) and bruised her leg. But, if it struck an individual with less "body armor," it could have taken off the limb. The moral to this story: if you want protection from small asteroids, get fat.
But that can't happen, can it? How often does a six mile wide asteroid collide with little Earth? An asteroid that large hits approximately every 100 million years. But don't celebrate just yet: A smaller asteroid can do just as much damage, nd they hit quite frequently. When an object is traveling at 18,000 miles per hour, it has unimaginable force. A paint chip put a dent in the space shuttle's cockpit window. If an object the size of a screw hit the space shuttle or a sattelite, it would be blown into thousands of pieces. When the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit, the enery released was equivelent to a Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb going off every second for seven years. That's not good. About 70% of the Earth's surface is water, so that is where the asteroid would most likely hit. It would harmlessly plop into the water, right? Wrong. If an object the size of a house hit ocean, millions would die from enormous tsunami waves. But on the good side: it would take plenty of whales with it. If an object 100 yards in diameter hit the Atlantic, the tidal wave would stop at the Applachain mountains after killing about 100 million people in America alone. If asteroids are so dangerous, then surely the government must have a plan to stop them. The current plan: run around like headless chickens on crack. You might think that we could just launch nuclear missiles at an incoming asteroid, but that would be like shooting a BB gun at a tank. What about a laser? In movies, they always blow up the asteroid with a laser. The fact is that if we fired the most powerful laser we can currently build at an incoming meteor, it would only have the kinetic force of about 20 pounds of TNT. Keep in mind that firing this laser would cause power-outages in the Mid-West and is not even built. Nuclear missiles, panicking, and lasers are all last resort. If we had enough time, we could study the asteroid and find a weakness. Sure, with enough time we could stop it. But currently, the amount of people looking for asteroids is comparable to the staff of a McDonalds. (and they probably get paid as much) Only about 1% of all the near-earth-objects are located. But even if the government found an asteroid, they wouldn't tell us commoners. Remember a few years ago when it was announced that an asteroid would hit us in 2028? They corrected themselves and said it would miss, but were they just trying to calm the public? But even worse than asteroids are dirty snowballs: comets. Comets travel at twice the speed as asteroids, and come in without warning. The maximum amount of time we could have to stop an incoming comet is a few years. Such is the way of comets. The question is not if an asteroid or comet will hit us, the question is when. They have in the past, and they will in the future. One could strike at any momemt: when you're at work, while you're sleeping, when you're on the crapper, or even while you're reading this. They are up there, mountains of rock, wandering aimlessly until they strike something. The only solution to this menace is constant paranoia and fear.
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65
million years ago, the dinosaurs met their fate when a six mile
wide asteroid struck near Mexico and killed 75% of all the life
on Earth. Don't you just hate it when that happens? If another one
should hit, everything near the impact would instantly be incinerated.
The rest of the planet would not be so lucky, however. Millions
of tons of debris would be thrown into the sky. The sun would blocked
for years, and molten rock would rain down upon the planet. Plants
would die from fire or lack of sun, and the rest of the food chain
would fall apart. You would be fortunate for it to land on your
head so you could avoid a death by disease and starvation. Not even
those with underground bunkers and years worth of spam would survive.
Some scientists even believe that enough debris would be thrown
into orbit to create a ring around the planet. The weak-minded fool
might say, "Wow, that would be pretty!" but think again:
It would disturb weather patterns by blocking out the sun in large
portions of the Earth. The climates would be in chaos.