A meteorite hit Russia today injuring well over hundreds of people, although no fatalities reported. How does a freaking meteor not kill anyone you ask? Well, the injuries were all caused by the delayed sonic boom of the meteorite entering the atmosphere destroying glass windows as people were rubbernecking the potential apocalypse. The meteor itself hit a Zinc Factory of all things, I suppose the aliens just wanted some sunscreen. The lesson? If you see a giant ball of flame heading towards you in the sky, stay away from windows and wear earplugs.
On a completely unrelated note, a 190,000 ton asteroid is flying by on top of us right now at 170,000 miles. What are the chances that two astronomical anomalies like that happening all in one day? Not as low as you might think. NASA tracks these great balls of ice in space on this website http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/. If you’re into panicking about being vaporized by an asteroid impacting earth instead of dying choking in your sleep, the one with 0.0007 fractional chance of impact looks pretty good. Of course, for that one, you’d have to wait until 2169.
Now that I’ve sufficiently scared myself into looking Wiki-ing asteroid impacts instead of doing my work, I’m glad I found someone just as paranoid as I am, and he’s an astronaut! Mr. Ed Lu has built the B612 Foundation. Their mission: a privately funded satellite which orbits the earth to detect rogue asteroids hell bent on destroying mankind. Their website http://b612foundation.org/ has pretty pictures, and a donation page if you can spare $25 bucks to save mankind from going the way of the dinosaurs. Now all we need is for Intellectual Ventures to upgrade their laser mosquito zapper into the Death Star and we can all sleep better at night.
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