Objects In Motion...

If you need something to do with your night and own a mildly powerful telescope, you could always head outside and look skyward to check out a passing asteroid. A pretty large rock (reports of its size range from 625 feet to 1400 feet wide, which seems like kind of a lot of wiggle room) is going to pass roughly 1.8 million miles of Earth and since it will be opposite the sun it should catch enough light to be visible if you know where to look. I know that sounds like a very wide berth, but when compared with the vastness of space, it isn't quite as roomy as people would like it to be. We've had asteroids pass closer in the last few years, but this is by far the largest asteroid to come near the plant in a long while and as such it has been classified as "potentially hazardous." This planet was hit once before (sorry, homeschoolers), but that was a few million years ago, so we're probably due for a good brushback pitch from the universe. Of course, this news has led to a day full of jokes about sending Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to save us if the asteroid suddenly made a sharp turn, but it does raise kind of an interesting question to ponder: if scientists found out we were going to be hit by an asteroid which would wipe out a large part of the planet, would they even tell us?

My immediate reaction is that of course they would, because they would have to. Governments are supposed to work for the people and keeping our imminent demise from us so we keep buzzing like good little worker bees would be cruel. However, the news would undoubtedly plunge the world into chaos as people abandoned their desks and went on treks to do everything on their bucket list in the next three days, because no one wants to die while formatting an Excel spreadsheet. So you can see why they wouldn't want to tell us until they were absolutely sure there was nothing they could do to prevent it from happening. Also, we may have to question just how much of a warning they would even have. According to a story in today's "Washington Post" a 200-foot wide asteroids passed within 40,000 miles of the planet in 2009 and scientists didn't see it until it was nearly on top of us. (In their defense they are trying to patrol a very large, very dark expanse that we can only see a small percentage of.) All we can really do is hope whatever is coming our way is large enough to be seen in time.

Still, these are the kinds of thoughts which are quickly followed by the reality of the world we live in today, which is the fact that no one is capable of keeping secrets anymore. Oh, sure, there are plenty of documents that have been deemed "classified" and which haven't come to light yet, but that is only because no one is looking into them. I hate to break it to the government workers, but most of the country doesn't care what you are working on. I know you went through a big screening to make sure you could keep a secret, but that was mostly unnecessary. Trust me when I tell you, a secret is much easier to keep when the gossip isn't very interesting. As soon as a cute reporter started showing interest in their work most of those nerds would crumble like wet cardboard. (This is also the logic I used to convince people that there is no way the government could cover up aliens. Someone would have blabbed to someone by now.) News of this level is the kind of thing which would send some low-level aide running to the first media outlet they saw so they could be the one who told the world that this time the end actually was near.

So, if an asteroid were coming we would know about it. That means the only real question left is what we would do with this knowledge. A couple months ago a quirky little movie quietly came and went titled, "Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World." It starred Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley and it explored this exact topic, namely people got a two week warning that an asteroid was coming which would wipe out the planet. And sure, the movie features a fair amount of people who go off trying to find long-lost loves, build bomb shelters and reconcile with long-estranged family members, but there are also a lot of people who just keep doing what they were doing because they didn't know what else to do. For example, they keep showing up to work at chain restaurants because people still have to eat for the two weeks until the asteroid got here. While I don't see that level of dedication to the workforce continuing, I actually do think there are people who would still try and keep basic services running out of respect for the rest of society. Just don't expect this blog to be one of those services because if I hear an asteroid is coming I will not spend a single moment working on coming up with a topic for a blog post. So, consider yourself warned - if this asteroid gets closer than expected you will be on your own for witty Armageddon observations.