Bus-Size Asteroid to Give Earth Close Shave Friday
I found this article very interesting since it is concerned
with something that I think about very often: asteroids that may pose potential
risks of colliding with the Earth. As I was looking through the Yahoo homepage,
I noticed that the subtitle for the article read, “Does it pose any danger”.
This phrase, intended to draw people onto the article’s page, seemed a little
weak for me. If the asteroid posed even the most remote possibility of actually
impacting and endangering our planet, this story would surely not be sequenced
behind other articles such as “John Travolta’s car chopped by crime ring”, or “7-year-old’s
sweet letter to NFL player”. It would be FIRST in line, and not only on Yahoo
news, it would be all over every news station in the world. I just found it
interesting how whoever decided on this subtitle actually believed that it
would work to draw people to read it, but then again, I and countless others
did read the article.
For the actual content of the article, I found it very
interesting how the asteroid is expected to come very close to the Earth in
comparison with most other asteroid’s, and yet, it will pass within 36,750 miles of Earth. This sort of
puts into perspective how large the universe actually is if this is considered
a close call. Also, the asteroid is roughly the size of a bus (36 feet), though
it would cause absolutely no problems to Earth even if it was on a
collision-course, since it would never make it through our atmosphere.
Apparently, the minimum size for an asteroid to cause issues is about 460 feet.
The rest of the article talks about how much we have improved in technology
that can detect these asteroids, which I guess is reassuring although it still
leaves us with no way to prevent one from causing mass destruction.
Overall, I found this article very informing, as well as
very thought-provoking. I cannot help but imagine all of the gigantic rock-like
masses floating out there in the universe that are traveling at upwards of 25
kilometers per second, and not worry
a little bit.
Here’s another article that I found that caught my attention
for obvious reasons…
Man with two hearts survives double heart attack
