THE SKY IS FALLING!
(…not really…but try telling Chicken Little believers that…)

The recent meteorite explosion over central Russia, not to mention the Earth’s very close encounter with an errant asteroid streaking across its orbit, has made a lot of folks nervous. We’ll probably be hearing a lot of apocalyptic prophesying and renewed references to the Mayan calendar wheel because of it all. Of course, the sky isn’t really falling…but try telling Chicken Little believers that.

This kind of thing isn’t really new, Mini-impacts of one kind or another are smacking into our planet every hour of the day, every day of the week;, but, because 99.99% of these are so small most are rarely either observed or even noticed. It’s been that way for the past four billion years or so.

Simply put, our planet is smack in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery, and we only have to look our moon or pictures of Mars to realize that, and that every now and then it’s  actually its turn to be…the target! And some of those shots have been doozies too. Some, have been by meteorites. Others, by asteroids. By their nature, meteorites tend to be more explosive, whereas asteroids are more like a solid slug from a big cannon (in military terms we might compare these to the difference between an HE shell airburst and an Armor-piercing one).

About a hundred years ago, near Tungusku, in eastern Siberia, one of those meteorite explosive air bursts flattened some 2000 square miles of taiga forest. No one was around its ground zero to actually see the event, but, a lot of folks heard it and, discovered the results of it later. Further back in time, maybe a couple of hundred thousand years or so, an asteroid this time, a solid rock about the size of a bus, crashed into the desert of what is today Arizona. The crater formed by that hit is over a mile in diameter, and a good 400ft deep. It’s still there, and viewed as a landmark attraction by those visiting that state.

And then of course, some scientist using modern technologies have tracked down what they believe was the biggest strike of all. A hit to the earth about a few million years ago, right off the coast of Yucatan, Mexico. By their calculations the resulting crater was about one third the size of the entire Gulf of Mexico, and close to a mile deep. And they’ve further calculated secondary impacts of break-away pieces from this monster hit as far east as our Carolinas, traces of these still being visible. Well, who knows where or when another errant bollide from outer space might come our way. All that can be said about that is…our planet sure as hell resides in a lively neighborhood. Let’s hope we humans learn how to duck…before that happens.

CENTURION