Heads Up

ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY fifteenth, one week from today, an asteroid about the size of a ten thousand square foot house will scream past the earth only seventeen thousand miles away, closer than some of the satellites we have in orbit.

Nobody knew about this big chunk of rock until about a year ago, when an astronomer in spain discovered it, and calculated its orbit. In recent years, and in years to come, very large asteroids have been and will continue to be sailing past earth, fairly closely. All of these are well known, and were/are expected.

It happens all the time, and about fifteen years ago the governments of the world and the astronomical community agreed on a continuous project to look for,find, and map the orbits of previously unknown asteroids, and so far, many have been found, including the current one coming next week.

Enough to make us realize that we don't know about very many at all, and, it is estimated, we are aware of about one percent of all large asteroids orbiting the sun. Enought to make us understand that there are so many asteroids out there, one of them that we never before know aobut could hit the earth at any time, wiping us all out.

Every day millinos of rocks come plunging into the earth from outer space. Most of them burn up in the atmosphere, but many also hit the ground, and sometimes they hit people, or buildings. Several times over the past few hundred  millions of years asteroids have hit and totally disrputed the atmosphere, the earth, and the weather, so massive were they.

some day, sooner or later, an asteroid will collide with earth and kill us all, unless we develop a system of finding them in advance, and nudging them to a different direction. the universe is a shooting gallery, at least close to solar systems, and probably interstellarly as well.

Among the greatest and most important undertakings of human kind will be the exploration and colonization of space, of which the search for and mining or nudging of asteroids will be an integral part. we the people of planet earth need goals and projects to unite us, to bring us together, at least part of the time. Dodging asteroids together will unite us, and keep us off the streets, and out of trouble.  We'll only get hit if we're lazy and inattentive. so, let's be alert!