|
|
 |
|
Last Updated: Aug 28, 2009 - 10:45:21 AM |
The asteroid known as 2007 WD5 was discovered in late November, 2007. It is thought to be about fifty yards across. This is larger than what some scientists are currently saying was the size of the object which struck Siberia on June 30, 1908, in what became known as the Tunguska Event. Depending on whose theoretical musings one chooses to believe, the Tunguska incident’s explosive force was the equivalent of from three to twenty megatons of TNT. Five hundred thousand acres were leveled.
Currently, 2007 WD5 is about midway between Earth and Mars. There is a one in seventy-five chance that 2007 WD5 will strike on January 30th. Before you start renewing all your bad habits and giving away your personal effects, rest easy. 2007 WD5 – if it strikes, and the odds are good that it very well might – is on its way to Mars, not Earth.
Don’t rest too “easy,” though.
The discovery of 2007 WD5 has truly serious implications for the people of Earth. This very large, heavy rock is capable of wiping out a very large city – I’ve seen Tokyo used as an example. Or, if it struck in the ocean, it could cause a tsunami of devastating proportions. Yet, it was only discovered about a month ago, as this is written. Were this asteroid on a potential collision course with Earth rather than Mars – Earth and Mars are in rather close proximity this month – what would we have done?
If our scientists cannot say with certitude that the asteroid will strike Mars until more observations are undertaken early in January -- likely, the chances for a Martian impact will decrease -- what would happen if 2007 WD5 were headed for possible impact with Earth and, in early January, scientists confirmed that the odds for an impact were increasing?
“Evacuate?” It would be impossible to predict the exact target at such a distance from our planet. As the asteroid drew closer and closer, it would likely be possible to say, “It’s going to strike somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere,” or “It’s going to hit some spot in North America.” Let’s say that, a week before impact, we determined that the asteroid will strike somewhere in the southeastern United States. With a week’s notice – and that’s extraordinarily optimistic – could we evacuate the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama? What if we somehow could make such an unprecedented evacuation a successful reality and the calculations were off just a tad, sending the asteroid to strike in the Gulf, knocking out Louisiana and Mississippi with a tsunami that temporarily reversed the flow of the Mississippi River?
The point is, with so little notice, we would be sitting ducks. “Shoot it down with a missile?” As was pointed out in one of the asteroid impact motion pictures from a few years back, if you break up the big rock, then you have a lot of smaller rocks with which to contend, deadly missiles striking more targets. Some scientists are theorizing that the Tunguska object might have been as small as sixty-five feet in diameter, because the larger rock may have broken into smaller pieces as it slammed against Earth’s atmosphere. A half-million acres of devastation was the result from that one impact. Can we risk the same or worse?
More to the point, does anyone care?
Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine that anyone really does. A few years back, it was estimated that the number of persons actively engaged in trying to identify and predict the course of Near Earth Objects was about the same – globally – as the number of employees at an average McDonald’s. And, what work there is in this area concentrates on larger objects, like 2007 WD5, not smaller objects, the size of what might have struck Tunguska.
If 2007 WD5 had been headed here, could we have counted on it hitting in the middle of nowhere? Or, could we have counted on a lot of people dying? Near Earth Object research is vital to mankind’s survival. Earth is in the middle of a cosmic battlefield, lethal projectiles whizzing all around us. And, we have no weapons with which to fight and so little intel data that we could have a global scale Pearl Harbor or
9-11 attack occur before I --
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
© Copyright 2007 by DOWN RANGE TV
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
