Sorry –
I thought I would get a chance to write an explanatory cover letter, but I was wrong. This presents itself as a Sports Blog, but it is so much more. Scan down for entries on improbable collisions, including, for example, the following.
Apparrently an asteroid is passing between earth and our communication satillites as we speak. Duck!
Nick
NASA Was Terrified by the Asteroids -- Terrified the Agency Might be Assigned a Worthwhile Mission: During the offseason an asteroid crossed within 48,000 miles of Earth -- well inside the orbit of the moon, and only somewhat above the level of telecommunications satellites. Another asteroid exploded in Earth's upper atmosphere. In July, something enormous struck Jupiter, leaving a "scar" thousands of miles across in the dense Jovian atmosphere. Had the object, probably a mega-comet, instead struck here, you would not be reading this, as life on Earth would have ended last month.
As telescopes and astronomy improve, potentially hazardous space objects -- asteroids and comets -- are turning out to be far more common than previously believed and far more likely to hit the Earth than once assumed. Currently there are more than 6,200 known near-Earth objects of significant size, and nearly two-thirds were discovered in this decade. Details of the potentially deadly ones are here. As is shown here, astronomical discoveries that there are a much greater number of dangerous space rocks than once assumed, coupled to geological discoveries that wide-area destruction from space-object strikes has been much more recent than we'd like to think, argue for building a system to stop asteroids from hitting the Earth. But while NASA continues to plan to waste hundreds of billions of your tax dollars opening a Motel Six on the moon -- even Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin calls the moon base plan "a dead end" -- the space agency is doing nothing to protect the Earth from space objects.
NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope FacilityThis impact mark on Jupiter is almost as large as Earth. If whatever hit there hit here, you wouldn't be reading this caption. But NASA still says all space money should be wasted!
Stopping an asteroid from hitting Earth appears technically feasible. Maybe an anti-asteroid system would never be used, but if one were, this would not only return tangible benefits to taxpayers -- it could be, oh, the single greatest achievement in human history. Yet NASA hasn't lifted a finger on an anti-space-object system. Space agency budget priorities continue to be focused exclusively on serving NASA internal constituencies that benefit from a Moon Motel Six -- aerospace contractors, congressional districts with manned-space flight centers -- and the taxpayer be damned. Though, NASA just established a Web site that lets you sign up for Twitter alerts on deadly objects approaching Earth. Maybe one will read, "Human life about to end. NASA got $1 trillion since founding yet did nothing. LOL!"
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org
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