While I was busy with weekend college visits, ticket sales for plays and birthday celebrations, I missed the opportunity to write about the celestial goings-on at the end of last week.
What are the odds of a meteor exploding over Russia the same day an asteroid buzzed by the earth? And if those two coincidental encounters weren’t enough, there were all sorts of reports of meteor showers in the San Francisco Bay Area over the weekend.
Question: what was going on late last week?
Moreover, I ask the question is this something we’re going to hear more and more about in the future and my suspicion is the answer is ‘yes.’ Scientists are paying much more attention to the possibility of a large asteroid threatening the earth and as they do, I suspect they will see more (and we will hear more) about these chance encounters.
After the scary incident in Russia, near the Urals, astronomers said an incident like that one should happen about once in 100 years. Coincidentally, it was about 105 years since the 1908 incident (Tunguska, Siberia), which was felt over a very large portion of that nation.
The near fly-by of the asteroid (2012 DA14) was never considered a real threat to earth. But, scientists continue to keep watch in case a future encounter might be.
Celestial objects are a curiosity for us earthlings. From childhood, I remember there were episodes of Batman and Gilligan that dealt with meteors crashing to earth. I wonder, then, if this was a key topic in the late 60s.
Later, I remember a backyard campout with friends the summer after my freshman year in high school as we stared up at the sky in fascination during a meteor shower.
And of course, kids from my generation were obsessed with the space program, in general. Many of my classmates listed ‘astronaut’ as the occupation they wanted to pursue ‘whenthey grew up.’
I wonder which vocation they did pursue.
When we were travelling on our honeymoon – we were driving in Pennsylvania - Lisa and I swear we saw the last pass-by of Halley’s Comet.
Anyway, the goings-on of late last week were a definite curiosity; the fly-bys and drop-ins definitely revved up the discussions of monitoring the skies to keep our world safe.
In any case, it’s all interesting conversation for the water cooler discussion.
JG
Originally posted 2/19/2013
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