Monday, June 27, 2011

Asteroid


If you're reading this right now, you already know: the giant asteroid that past by Earth this morning did not hit us and we're all, for the time being, safe. The asteroid, named MD 2011, flew by Antarctica only 7,500 miles from the Earth's surface (our moon is 240,000 miles away) and is the fifth-closet asteroid to ever whiz by our planet. Yeeps! The rock measured between 16 and 35 feet wide and appeared as a steak of blue light zooming by.
Had the asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere, it would've burned and disintegrated, not posing a threat to our planet. However, scientists say the MD 2011 serves to reminds us just how dangerous an asteroid collision with Earth would be. Like, do you see any dinosaurs roaming around? No. Because they were all killed off by an asteroid. There are currently about 8,100 asteroids surrounding Earth, and about 1,200 of them are "Potentially Hazardous Asteroids."
Cue music: I could stay awake, just to hear you breathing ...
Tell Bruce Willis to assemble a team of scruffy oil rig workers and prepare for space travel -- NASA's got its eye on on this 1,900 foot asteroid that has a one in 1,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2182. They're going to send some sort of probe up to check on this behemoth asteroid in 2016 and I really hope Ben Affleck and Bruce were consulted. They have experience with this sort of thing.
Watch you smile why you were sleeping ...
Asteroids have proven to change our planet's history (sorry, dinos!) so I'm glad we're kinda keeping a look out for giant rocks headed our way. I guess I'd rather die from an asteroid "attack" than a World War of some sort. I've seen Deep Impact and Armageddon a bunch (a bunch), so I feel like I have a leg up on how to try and survive possibly the most deadly disaster that we've seen in millions of years. Purchase your spot in the doomsday bunker now.
While you're far away and dreaming.
The next low-flying asteroid will likely pass by Earth in six years, so we've got a little time to sit back and relax. But we shouldn't get too complacent (unless you're super old and are going to probably die in the next five years) because the space debris is a comin' for us.
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender ...
Great, now I'm hungry for animal crackers. Better eat them while I still can.

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