Post by The City Manager on Feb 26, 2007 7:30:24 GMT -5
Here's one for you, if you haven't already heard about it.
On a Sunday afternoon, I watched an interesting program on C-Span with Neil deGrasse Tyson. You'd know him if you saw him. He hosts a scientific program on PBS, and he's the Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City -- a really smart and entertaining individual.
Near the end of the program to promote his new book, there was a question and answer period and someone asked about "asteroids." After that, he went into a long explanation that included the following.
Apparently, in 2004, a new asteroid the size of a football stadium was discovered, and within a week, some rough calculations indicated that is was coming this way and would pass very close to the Earth in 2029. The same week of the discovery, there was a large tsunami that devastated Indonesia, and so the announcement was lost in the more pressing current news of the day.
The asteroid, called Apophis, is expected to pass over northern Europe so close that it will dip below the orbits of our communications satellites. However, there is a small window, called a keyhole, that if it passes through, will allow it to return and impact the Earth seven years later in April of 2036, striking a point in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Santa Monica, California. If that happens, monster waves will wipe out most of the U.S. west coast.
