Asteroid Attacks Earth- What's Your Perspective?

I want to talk about perspective.
So here’s a little story with the moral at the end…

I watched a video this week, the film was 'Deep Impact'.
It's about an asteroid on a collision path with the Earth, and our
efforts to avert the disaster.

If it hit, it would make a, wait for it, deep impact! You've got to
hand to those Hollywood types, haven't you!

It came out in 1998, the same year as 'Armageddon', a film
about an asteroid on a collision path with the Earth, and our
efforts...well you know the rest.

I like both films, it's tough to choose between them.

'Armageddon' does have Liv Tyler, and the fantastic Diane
Warren song by Aerosmith, 'I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing'.

On the other hand, 'Deep Impact' has Tea Leoni, who could
focus my telescope any day of the week.

If you haven't seen the films, look away now, because.
in 'Armageddon' they stop the asteroid, but in 'Deep Impact'
they don't.

Ok, you can look back now.
Hhhm, not sure that works.

Back to real life, and in fact, in the outer reaches of our universe,
they have spotted a little critter of an asteroid, which seems to
be heading our way.
It's a few hundred years away, but plans have already been
investigated as to what to do.

Landing on it?
Er, I don't think so.

Nuking it from the Earth?
Well that's a good idea, until they found that asteroids can either
be hard or soft, and there is no way of telling which type they are.

A hard one will simply divide into 2 or 3 asteroids instead of 1,
and a soft asteroid will simply absorb the impact like a sponge.

So the latest plans by the boffins is to create a massive nuclear
explosion *next* to the asteroid, and this will create enough
force to push it off course, making it miss us.

So an asteroid impact doesn't really affect any of us, we'll be
long gone.

That's the point I want to make.

An asteroid will on average, hit the Earth every 100 million years,
at least.
After being around for millions of years, the dinosaurs met their
end when an asteroid hit us 65 million years ago.

The Earth is around 5 billion years old, and will last around
another 5 billion until our sun explodes.

I'm always fascinated by these galactic (is that the word?
galactic? astrological?) facts and figures, the scale of the
numbers is awesome, and for me it drives home that although
we may think the world revolves around us, it doesn't.

Our presence here is fleeting, if the life of our universe is put
into a 24-hour day, mankind only appears in the last 30 seconds
of the last minute.

So the next time you break a fingernail, the next time you are
carved up in traffic, the next time you say you 'have' to do a job
you hate, stop for a second, think about our place as humans,
get some perspective, and then take action to enjoy yourself in
life!!!