Asteroid Incoming

by Marko Peric

March 16, AD 2880 has a one in three hundred chance of being a very, very bad day. An asteroid known as 1950 DA might crash into the Earth on that day.

And now for the bad news: this asteroid is roughly one kilometre wide. What does that mean? If 1950 DA were to collide with a planet, the explosion would be comparable to that of 100,000 megatons of TNT detonated simultaneously. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II was 15 kilotons. Yes, that's kilotons. There are 1000 kilotons in one megaton. And yes, I said 100,000 megatons. So this wouldn't be a good thing.

Ready for some good news? It's not a "planet killer" as far as asteroids go, so we aren't talking total global devastation here. It wouldn't be pleasant, but it's not going to cause global winter and mass extinctions. Sure, the damage would be unparalleled. For example, if it were to hit an ocean, the resulting tsunami would likely destroy every coastal city on said ocean. If it were to hit land, it would dig out a crater kilo meters wide and devastate everything for hundreds of kilo meters all around. So if we're really lucky it will crash down in central France.

You're probably saying to yourself "Sure, this all sounds terrible, but it's not for another 878 years. Why should I care?" Well, I wouldn't advise you start losing sleep over this, not unless your future plans include being cryogenically frozen until the year 3000, then being thawed out to hang around with a one-eyed mutant and a wisecracking robot. For the rest of us, we aren't too likely to be around when this happens, nor are our great great great great grandchilden's great grandchildren. And there's only a 300 to one chance of it hitting us anyway. Those are fairly long odds.

So, even if it was certain that an asteroid was going to hit the Earth on March 16, AD 2880, which it's not, it's not really our problem. So why should you worry about it? And why worry about all the other asteroids and comets and stray oversized meteoroids out there that astronomers haven't tracked? There are enough pieces of space rock hurtling through the void that sooner or later one of them is going to hit us hard. And Bruce Willis will most likely be unable to save us. But since the time frame is uncertain, it's not really something to get nervous about, is it? You can't live your life in fear of what might happen in the distant future.

I'll let you decide if I'm being sarcastic or not.