So apparently on April 13, 2036, an asteroid will a few thousand miles by Earth. There is a 1 in 45,000 chance that Earth's gravity will suck it in and spell doom for lots and lots of people. Cool, huh?
The scientists that figured this out think the U.N. should do something about it. Blowing it up might cause lots of little asteroid fragments to hit us, so that option's out. A boring but safer idea (anyone ever read Asimov's Nemesis?) is to get a spaceship or something with some mass and use Newton's gravity formula to nudge it off course just a bit.
Three things here. One, I'm not too worried about dying from an asteroid hit with those odds (which are much worse than my odds of fatally slipping in the bathtub or dying in a car accident, and much better than my odds of dating a supermodel, according to http://www.funny2.com/odds.htm). Besides, a big explosion might be pretty cool.
Two, regarding the state of the Earth in thirty years, I'd be more concerned about all this global warming stuff than a 1/45,000 asteroid. Whether or not you believe humans are the cause of it or not, there are some pretty interesting graphs and figures out there. And how much less oil will we have by then?
Third, they're expecting the U.N. to get something done?
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That would be so exciting. or what if it just took out the moon? then both would fall to earth. whoa.
-The Swedish Eskimo
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