h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!


'There's a 1-in-300 chance that a recently discovered asteroid, believed to be about 1,300 feet long, could hit Earth in 2029, a NASA scientist said Thursday,'

That's right! On Friday the thirteenth of April 2029 there's a helluva better chance that this rock will hit us than there ever is that I'll win a lottery!

Aaaaargh!



(I wonder how things would change if I actually bought a lottery ticket.)







Merry Christmas!

Not much point in opening that savings account or worying about my cholesterol level then Gonna binge out on whisky, cigars, and all the rich food I can take

'Gonna binge out on whisky, cigars, and all the rich food I can take'

For twenty-five years?

Might not make it quite that long on that regime but I'll have a damn fine time doing it, and as I'm only a few years off 50 anyway, I'm not too bothered if we're all going to die in 25 years anyway


Cigareets and whisky and wild, wild wimmin
They'll drive you crazy, they'll drive you insane

Meteor-rite or meteor-wrong?
Here are some clues to go along.

If it was too hot to touch, or glowed bright red;
if it smoked or spat, or sizzled or cracked;
if it made a little hole not a great big crater;
then a meteor-wrong you can expect a bit later.

It if fell from the sky, then when all is said,
its usually been thrown from the neighbour's shed.
If it was black as coal, and crumbles like cake,
then don't bet on it being the next Tagish lake.

If it scared their granny in the middle of the night,
with a bang and a flash of strange coloured light;
if they saw it fall as a great glowing ball,
then it probably wasn't a real meteor-rite fall.

Matthew Genge

Yeah I once spent most of my money on wine, women and song -- the rest I squandered.

in all seriousness: They've upped the probability of impact to 98.4 to one 1.

'many astronmers around the world, and we continue to update our risk analysis for this object. Today's impact monitoring results indicate that the impact probability for April 13, 2029 has risen to about 1.6%, which for an object of this size corresponds to a rating of 4 on the ten-point Torino Scale. '

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/


hmm. . .

Here's the updated analysis page: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html

Me buddy Bert had a nuclear annihilation plan many years ago. It involved really good brandy, champagne, and illegal substances.
Along with the addresses and phone numbers of every cute girl within four blocks.

I wonder what he's up to, I should give him a call.

Something I find funny about this whole thing is that JPL is downplaying the 1 in 98 possibility of this thing hitting us in 25 years but they have a link to a speech by the head of the Indian Space Program calling on the world to divert an asteroid that has a 1 in 300 chance of hitting us over 800 years from now. Surely if space experts are thinking we should take action now on a 1 in 300 8 centuries away, some must be thinking it's time to launch Bruce Willis on this 1 in 98 a quarter century away.


Actually, I'm not really worried. Maybe a little excited about the fireworks that might happen at my wake, but not really worried.

Now I'm really worried! Bruce Willis will be almost 75 when this gets here! And Ben Aflick will be older than me! Anhaga, it's up to you to prepare the team. I'm thinking maybe McCauley Culkin should start training......

Actually, we were talking about this last night (Christmas dinner conversation: the date of the Apocalypse) and we pretty much concluded "this is just a small one, it's only about 3 or 4 hundred metres. It won't make too much of a hole. And it'll probably hit the ocean so there'll just be a few tsunamis."

Imagine the sort of weird feeling I had when I looked at the news this morning.

Oh. I misread the JPL site. It's up to 1 in 60 chance!