Sunday, February 17, 2013

Near Misses From the Stars


Yesterday a meteor scorched the sky over Russia. Its sonic boom broke windows and flaming contrail brightened the snowy steppes. Its path was recorded by thousands of cell phones and both RT News and the BBC broadcasted various videos of the fiery celestial visitor. Its sonic boom over the Ural city of Chelyabinsk broke thousands of windows and the flurry of broken glass shards wounded hundreds of residents watch the cosmic phenomena.

Chelyabinsk was off-limits throughout the Cold War, since the USSR's top-secret nuclear research were located to the far north of the city and now is Russia's main nuclear-waste management area. Accordingly Chelyabinsk has a well-deserved reputation for secretiveness along with a nasty streak of inhospitality.

The meteor came out of the sun and there was little warning of its approach.

The explosion from the meteor's break-up was estimated to equal twenty Hiroshima blasts.

No one has found the earth-fall of the meteorite.

Similar reports came from San Francisco and Cuba, leading some astrologists to conjecture that these were fragments of a large asteroid passing very close to the Earth.

About 17,150 miles (27,600 kilometers) above the planet's surface.

And that's close.

But a miss is okay with asteroids.

I have no interest in acting as a screaming extra in the remake of Bruce Willis' ARMAGEDDON.

He really does suck as much as Chuck Norris.

ps there were two cars in Iowa in 1903. They had an accident outside of Davenport. Of course that could be a myth, but I remember reading it somewhere.

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