Roundabout Dubai

Close Encounter

Do you know what 2004 XP14 is? Is it a new mobile phone? Is it anew video game? No, It’s a giant asteroid that came close to leaving a deep impact and start the chain reaction of an Armageddon-like event.

Every time I learn about a new asteroid zipping by planet earth and missing us by a tiny astronomical distance I find myself questioning the meaning of our existence and see humanity in a different universal perspectives. Such news is one of the rare examples of potential finality where obsession personal destiny and depression over unlived tomorrows give way to cosmic reflection. Disasters at this level leave little time for us to worry about our individual fates. If everything is going to go up in smoke and our planet might be switched back few hundred million years, who is going to bother about their infinitely insignificant personal affairs?

Ok, well, the point of this long introduction was to say that yesterday our planet was very close tot the point of suffering a cataclysmic event that would have resulted in massive destruction (if not its complete annihilation) when a large asteroid passed us at a distance slightly farther than that of the moon. To be exact, it passed as close as 433,000 Kilometers from our planet. Its name is Asteroid 2004 XP14; and according to scientists, we were very lucky not to have had collided with this rocky monster traveling at a speed of 8 miles/second. I love reading the different descriptions of this near calamity in different news media: asteroid "came within a hair's breadth" according to The Hindustan Times article; "hurtled harmlessly past the earth" says the story of The Calgary Sun; "misses us by a whisker" as reported in the Daily Express; "zips harmlessly past earth," says Forbes.com; "has close encounter with earth," reported ABC Online described it; "phew! It's missed us," declares the Mirror. My favorite though comes from the Irish Independent: "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a giant asteroid!"

Even newspapers get excited about this! If it wasn't for the real possibility of not being so lucky every time, I'd say let's have more of these close encounters!

P.S. Why do I have the weird feeling that last summer we had something similar? Is it only my imagination?

posted by bandicoot @ 7:29 PM