I was scanning a few blogs for examples of great communicators and ran across a reference to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium. The following video was given as an example.
I was particularly interested in the description of the asteroid Apophis and its close approach to earth on April 13, 2029 and again on April 13, 2036. In 2029, Apophis will come closer to the earth than our communcation satellites in synchronous orbit. The measurement errors are small enough that it is known that the asteroid will not hit the earth. But, seven years later according to Dr. Tyson, an earth strike is possible, at least at the time this video was recorded. This NASA paper, published in early 2008, may shed some better light on the possibility of an earth strike.
In the event that I’ll still be celebrating birthdays 30 years from now (the mortality tables are against it), an earth strike from a 300 meter diameter rock would really rain on my parade. I hope future measurements resolve the orbit so that we don’t have to worry about April 13 in 2036.
An asteroid strike off the coast of southern California, as Dr. Tyson surmises about Apophis, reminds me of the book “Lucifer’s Hammer,” by Niven and Pournelle. A chilling book, I found it interesting not only for the human struggle against natural catastrophe and evil men, but for a couple of locations that were mentioned in the story. The little southern San Joaquin Valley town where I grew up was drowned in flood waters, but was the site of a scavenging expedition with diving gear to recover food from a submerged supermarket.
The location of the band of survivors that are central to the story was near Springville, east of Porterville, CA. I’ve spent a couple of enjoyable days in that area, exploring and geocaching, and one of these days intend to go back.
