Too bad we’ll all be long gone before the Sweet Meteor Of Death shows up…
Via The New American:
No, this is not a drill. A huge asteroid is heading for our planet, and with a diameter of one kilometer, a strike by it could wipe out human life. Don’t cancel any plans, give contemporary doomsayers a pat on the back, or descend into ’roid rage just yet, though. Despite a speed of nine miles per second, or 38,000 mph, the object’s arrival isn’t expected till 2880 — March 16, to be precise.
When that time does come, however, there will be cause for concern (assuming man is still traipsing about our blue orb). The asteroid — identified as “1950 DA” — has a 1 in 300 chance of striking Earth. That’s far greater than the odds of being murdered in Chicago (1 in 6,250) or dying in a car crash (1 in 5,000).
But there is good news other than the fact that, along with our national debt, 1950 DA is posterity’s problem. Scientists believe that the more than 800 years till its arrival give us ample time to avert disaster. Unlike in the film Armageddon, however, this wouldn’t be achieved by blowing the asteroid up. University of Tennessee researchers claim this would just increase the devastation by creating multiple impacts. Instead, writes The Independent’s Lizzie Dearden, “small changes could be made to its surface to disrupt the forces keeping it together and cause it to break up in outer space.” Dearden doesn’t explain how this would have a different effect from that of blowing 1950 DA up, but, presumably, it would cause a disintegration that would reduce the asteroid to harmless-size pieces, to ones with a trajectory that would take them away from Earth, or both.