An asteroid of a similar size to a rock that exploded above Siberia in 1908 with the force of a thousand atomic bombs whizzed close past Earth on Monday, astronomers said on Tuesday.Actual apocalypse: averted. Financial apocalypse: still on schedule.
2009 DD45, estimated to be between 21 and 47 meters (68 and 152 feet) across, raced by at 1344 GMT on Monday, the Planetary Society and astronomers' blogs reported.
The gap was just 72,000 kilometers (44,750 miles), or a fifth of the distance between Earth and the Moon and only twice the height of satellites in geosynchronous orbit, the website space.com said.
The estimated size is similar to that of an asteroid or comet that exploded above Tunguska, Siberia, on June 30 1908, flattening 80 million trees in a swathe of more than 2,000 square kilometres (800 square miles).
Still lets hear it for deep space monitoring. What's that? They only knew it was coming three days before? Phenomenal. Well, at least we now know that a scenario where a giant rock bears down on us and we have weeks to do what we always wanted to do, tell people we love them, and generally make our peace with our impending death will never happen. We'll look up one day and see a giant flaming rock hurtling down from space, we'll all receive a text message from NASA saying "WoRLd asplode s00n. LULZ! 0ur bad", and we'll all die on fire.
More important than this horrible revelation is our worst fears being realized right after we elected a black guy. Barry takes the oath and God starts lobbing giant rocks high and tight, just like Deep Impact and Dave Chappelle predicted.
No comments:
Post a Comment