By Mark Thompson
Fri Jun 24, 2011 12:20 PM ET
discovery.com
This may sound like late notice, but astronomers have just spotted a rather chunky asteroid heading our way, set to narrowly miss us on Monday.
In fact, it will be such a narrow miss that astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere should be able to spot the flyby with fairly modest telescopes.
Coincidentally, I was watching yet another re-run of Armageddon the other night when the heroic Bruce Willis and his motley crew of oil drillers-turned-astronauts saved Earth from certain asteroid doom. On arrival at the asteroid, and having sacrificed many of the team, Willis et al. succeeded in dropping a typical Hollywood-style uber-bomb into the depths of the incoming asteroid and blew it to bits, giving everyone on Earth a glitzy meteor shower.
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There are over 200,000 asteroids charted since the 1800's. On at least one evening back in the 1960's, I witnessed a bombardment of small asteroid debris landing in a large field causing small brush fires.
ReplyDelete"and remember to BUY SILVER", lol !!
ReplyDeleteBilly - It would be a good chance to test out any anti-asteroid technology.
ReplyDeleteAnon - Wow, made it all the way in. In the 1970's I saw one just before sundown as a bright flash. NASA came to our school trying to get help finding it. They were only going to give $25 to the person who found it.
Heff - That's right!