Asteroid hysteria
Some of the media have had a field day with the news about a possible close encounter between an asteroid and the Earth on February 1, 2019.
The British tabloids in particular have been going crazy (what's new?) The Daily Mail ran the headline "The end is nigh", the Daily Mirror calls it the armageddon asteroid. The Times calls it the rock of doom and points out that we are 28 times more likely to be hit by the asteroid than a person is to win the National Lottery. But, come on, 28 times essentially zero is still essentially zero...
The scientists point out that the uncertainty in the position of the asteroid is still tens of millions of kilometres. The Earth is about 12,000 kilometres in diameter. So, according to our current knowledge, the chance of the asteroid hitting the earth is a bit like throwing a grain of rice randomly at a football field and happening to hit a football left behind on the field. Time to panic? Perhaps not.
All this said, it's still pretty important to keep track of the asteroids out there - perhaps something could hit us - and if an asteroid collided with Earth, we could be looking at anything from a pretty serious earthquake to annihilation of humans.
Is it good enough to only look at half the sky though? You might not realise that the only dedicated asteroid observatory in the southern hemisphere was closed in 1996...
The fear factor has brought the entrepreneurial spirit out in some - there are already a handful of proposals circulating for how to stop a killer asteroid - and they don't all involve Bruce Willis or Ben Affleck. One is to blow the thing up with laser beams projected from a dozen platforms in orbit. And that proposal came from somebody with a slightly vested interest in such technology... there's always somebody ready to turn a buck and it helps if there is enough public fear to cause a kneejerk government reaction.
At least the scientists are keeping calm about it all. They know that the chance is incredibly slim - and are keeping watch on the asteroid, just to make sure it stays out of trouble.
