 |
In The Sky...Deep Impacts?
By Richard A. Fleetwood - May 2001
(From My Summer 2000 Newsletter)
[In The Sky> -
Many of you probably don't know that the sky is about to have another interesting
celestial event. Another comet is about to brighten up and give a month long
show for the northern hemisphere. Comet Linear will be getting brighter and
brighter as it passes under the Big Dipper and the Northern Star this month.
It will be at its brightest and best view on July 19th. You will have to
get up early in the morning after the moon has gone down and before the twilight
brightens up the eastern sky to get your best view of this best naked eye
comet since Hale Bopp three years ago. You can learn more about Linear at
the Astronomy Magazine website here
http://www.astronomy.com. Click on
THIS MONTH on the main page, which will take you to SKY SHOW, where you can
scroll down to the COMETS AND ASTEROIDS banner near the bottom of the page,
and that will take you to the COMET LINEAR details where you can find out
viewing details.
Many of you have seen the two asteroid movies that came out a few years
ago....Armageddon, and Deep Impact. Both had stunning, state of the art special
effects, decent stories, and Deep Impact in particular delved into the
government's possible response to save as many lives as possible in whatever
ways they could.
Suppose an asteroid a thousand feet across was on a target for earth. Suppose
it was missed by the SPACE WARN programs, with only a few astronomers scanning
the entire expanse of our skies, looking for dangerous flying objects that
could cause havoc and chaos to all of humanity. Just suppose it came out
of nowhere, and was just minutes away from impact, with nothing any human
could do to stop it from ending its flight in a pile of earthly rubble.
You're out in the countryside, doing the things you enjoy, maybe living in
a quiet, peaceful home miles from the nearest big town. Sitting out on your
porch in the afternoon, enjoying the quiet serenity and listening to the
breeze wafting thru the trees, the insects buzzing thru the garden, and a
dog far off across the field. Maybe you're reading the latest best seller
from your last trip to town.
Suddenly, an incredibly bright light far off to the north, just above the
horizon, startles you, then blinds you momentarily before your eyes adjust.
You feel an unworldly low vibration, lower even then the sound you heard
and felt that time you went to watch one of the space shuttle launches. The
light, trailing fire, sparks, smoke, and huge smaller fireballs is moving
at a speed you can barely fathom, in a trajectory mostly towards you, but obviously
higher and to the right side of your house, as you face north. You are frozen
in utter terror, unable to move a single muscle, or even blink. You think
first that maybe it's a plane in the midst of a crash, or even the reentry
of Space Station MIR, as you'd heard was possible months before when Russia
was planning to abandon it. You realize it is neither, and comprehend the
end of your world is at hand as you think correctly what other possibilities
this flaming torch of sky must be.
In only a few handfuls of seconds, the fireball has moved from the far horizon,
and covered the space of the sky to the edge of your overhanging porch roof,
disappearing from your sight momentarily. You feel your feet move, as you
suddenly leap off the porch to the yard and run around the east side of your
home, your eyes constantly on that bulbous, writhing trail of black smoke
and vapors. As you round the corner of your house, you instantaneously follow
that smoke trail southwards to the glowing head of deathly orange/white fire,
surely the color of the flames of Hell itself. The molten rock, you finally
comprehend, is going to HIT somewhere south of you...how far away you do
not know. Your mind reels and tosses thoughts and fears around, from the possible options you have for
you, and your family, in this short moment of time before death approaches
in whatever form it has for you.
You remember many years before watching tv, and seeing the old 8 millimeter
video taken in the 70s, by a tourist in the Grand Tetons, as a several ton
meteor passes directly over the range of the Tetons, from left to right on
the tv screen, not hitting anything, and passing out of range of the camera.
You remember reading that this meteor was also tracked by NORAD on radar
systems constantly on alert for incoming ICBM missiles, and how this huge
rock, slowed by its first encounter with earth's atmosphere, went into an
eliptical orbit, and on its next pass into thin air, burned up on high above
the ocean.
Then, at the exact moment you think, and pray, that this rock might do the
same thing, you are knocked forward several feet by a blast of air and sound
from behind...an unending series of growing sonic booms and air pressure
blast waves causing you to scramble, trying to get back on your feet, the
effects of the passage of this unearthly intruder in your portion of the sky. As
you fall, you hear your house being destroyed to your right, the windows
blowing in, the roof fracturing at the joists and overhangs, the entire front
of the house seeming to tremble and vibrate, and trees breaking off in mid
trunk in the areas immediately around you.. You look up, and 3 seconds after
the flaming ball drops below the horizon far to your south, you see the flash
of light eerily reminiscent of the old nuclear test videos on The Discovery
Channel. It has hit...far to the south...maybe 40 or 50 miles. Right near
the city you grew up in many years before. You know there is nothing you
can do about it, as you struggle to breath as the air pressure and atmospheric
vibrations crescendo, and start to slowly subside. You area seriously injured, bleeding
from your eyes, ears, nose, and other areas because of the huge changes in air pressure.
Where is the rest of your family, you think? Will they be safe, or are they
hurt or trapped somewhere this very moment? You feel the earth lurch underneath
you again, this time seeming to wave up, down, and sideways, all at the same
time. It is impossible to stand as you fall to your hands and knees. You see what
looks like ocean waves coming at you from the south at tremendous speed, from the strike area...except it's not water...it is earth,
soil, pastureland, and rocks. The waves grow in height as they get closer,
and you now know you will die if you can't get away. The soil bucks beneath
your feet and you fall again, landing heard on your side, as the loudest
sound mankind has ever heard physically assaults your senses in every possible
way, the blast wave from the land strike coming towards you at 500 miles
per hour in a visible dust wall as it passes quickly over the farmland towards
you. You have one moment to pray to your heavenly father before you loose
conciousness, as the barely visible blast wave, caused by the unleasing of
power the size of 1000 megatons of nuclear weapons, slams into your chest
like a huge, ungodly, invisible sledgehammer. You never awake.
OK....you can breath now. It's just a story. But a story that HAS happened
before. Right here in my home state of Alabama. No, not lately. Many years
ago...oh, say....around 81.5 million or so...give or take a week. Down a
few miles south of the state capital of Montgomery, is a small town called
Wetumpka, which rests on the western shore of the Coosa River. Across the
river and a little southeast, is what is known as the Wetumpka Astrobleme.
A 1000 foot asteroid came in low from the north in the time of the dinosaurs,
hitting in the shoreline of the shallow inland sea there, much like a baseball
hit for a line drive...low and long. It hit the earth with the force of many
nuclear weapons, killing everything for a 20 mile radius, and destroying
things and land for much farther reaches, evening kicking up a tsunami in
the shallow water of the inland harbor. The dust and debris clouds cooled
the atmosphere by a few degrees for a couple of years, yet were nothing compared
to the 6 mile wide dinosaur killer that hit 16 million years later. READ
more about it here, and see some pictures of what the 4 mile wide crater
looks like now.
http://www.mindspring.com/~rwhigham/wetu.htm
CNN did a report on this astrobleme in 1998, and you can read about it at
this page
http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9807/17/t_t/alabama.crater/index.html
Yes, it could happen again. Just like in my story, with little or no warning,
and death to millions of unknowing victims. Today....next week....in 24 seconds.
What could you do to prepare? Ayything? Nothing? What? Think about it and
get back to me on that.
Updated May 2001 - © 2001 By Richard A. Fleetwood |
 |
and
![](pixel.gif"){kind=tracking}