Duck!

Early this morning, an asteroid zipped past Earth, at a distance of just over halfway from the earth to the moon. This afternoon, another asteroid will do the same, at about 20% of the distance from the earth to the moon. Astronomers figured out on Sunday morning, three days ago, that these hunks of rock would be coming. And impressive hunks of rock they are, both estimated to be about forty feet across.

In the vastness of space, we manage to avoid direct hits from full grown asteroids most of the time. The impact from something the size of a small cottage would almost certainly be locally devastating. Monitoring for potentially dangerous asteroids has apparently only been in practice for the last couple of decades. I imagine the astronomers on Sunday got a bit of a fright until they were able to calculate that the asteroids would miss us.

What about the day when the calculations say we will get hit? What purpose will knowing the invitability of the impact serve? If an asteroid were expected to hit somewhere in a 100 mile radius of a heavily populated area within the next three days, would people take to the roads, skies and waterways to escape, as before an incoming hurricane? Would that do any good? It would depend in part on how precisely astrophysicists could predict where the asteroid would hit, presumably based on the trajectory and velocity of the asteroid, the rotation of the earth, and a bunch of math that uses more letters than numbers. It would be fascinating to know what sort of procedures and contingency plans are being developed by scientists and, presumably, government and military leaders to prepare for this unlikely yet potentially catastrophic event.

I fully expect Bruce Willis to be part of those plans.