Posted on 09/19/2009 8:33:19 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Here are just a few more things to fear that you might not have considered fearing. If you're one of those oblivious people who's not living in constant fear of these things, you need to wake up and put on your pants one leg at a time or expect to pay the pied piper.
Killer asteroids. According to Julie Luck, there are 20,000 asteroids just flying like crazy around our solar system ready to slam into Earth at any moment and either completely pulverize the planet or, hopefully, merely wreak massive death and destruction from the skies.
A June 2003 National Geographic news service article states: "It is almost certain that Earth will be hit by an asteroid large enough to exterminate a large percentage of our planet's life, including possibly over a billion people, according to researchers."
The article goes on to say no one knows when that might happen -- which means it could be any moment now.
Recently a large asteroid passed very near Earth. We don't worry nearly enough about this form of potential catastrophe.
The good thing about Twitter is that now there is a Twitter stream from NASA that will tweet you whenever a killer asteroid is barreling toward Earth about to blow the planet to smithereens. There's still nothing we can do about it, but at least we can spend our last hours doing what we enjoy if you know what I mean.
(Excerpt) Read more at greensboro.rhinotimes.com ...
Using small asteroids to destroy every last one of our enemies — making it look like an accident of course — seems like the best of all space program spinoffs.
As always, a bunch of people got killed on the Hajj this year. Some years ago a group of Turkish pilgrims got trampled to death by a frightened horde of “worshippers” at the annual cast stones at the dead goat ceremony. They’d set down their suitcases, and when they turned to flee the oncoming crowd, tripped over their own luggage.
I was hopin’ someone would take care of that.
Using smaller rocks against bigger rocks is probably the best approach, given enough lead time.
Could be, but good luck getting anyone to answer the phone at the claims number.
Quite.
OUCH.
Gotta hate it when that happens.
I checked out the link from Emilio Spedicato. It was from an Italian University, written in Italian, but it had nothing to do with astronomical events. Can you find the correct entry, I really would like to read it, even if it is in Italian?
I also tried the “Wabar” link but it is also a bust. In the 1970’s there was a National Geographic article about a contributing author who was taken by some Saudi’s to find and iron meteor in the Rub al Kali (Empty Quarter). They finally located it. It was at least 4 feet in diameter and 2 to 3 feet thick. Much too heavy to take home. It was sitting in a crater type depression around 200 feet in diameter. Local tradition was that it destroyed a sinful city (echos of Soddom and Gommorah).
I am wondering if this was from a more recent strike, but that perhaps the whole Empty Quarter was sterilized several thousand years ago by a strike that left the biblical and local stories of “sin city”. Any info out there?
There wasn’t a strike, as it turned out, which destroyed a “sin city”. During the Middle Ages there was a quake, and the town was heavily undermined with storage cellars, hidey-holes, and that kind of thing. The impacting object they found fell in the last hundred years or so. :’(
A Catastrophical Scenario for Discontinuities in Human History
Journal of New England Antiquities Research Association, 26, 1-14, 1991
1st version published in 1985 as Quaderno 85/3 | Emilio Spedicato - U of Bergamo
Posted on 04/19/2002 12:42:27 PM PDT by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669263/posts
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