Asteroid – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bailout

No matter how much us humans do to destroy ourselves – be it economically, through warfare or polluting the ecology – Mother Nature ultimately has us in her grip (in her grasp?). Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes – all make our pitiful efforts to wipe each other out pale in compare. So, if you are still crying yourself to sleep over the bailout, then consider this – and be thankful you are not in the Sudan (for many reasons):

A very small, few-meter sized asteroid, designated 2008 TC3, was found Monday morning by the Catalina Sky Survey from their observatory near Tucson Arizona. Preliminary orbital computations by the Minor Planet Center suggested an atmospheric entry of this object within a day of discovery. JPL confirmed that an atmospheric impact will very likely occur during early morning twilight over northern Sudan, north-eastern Africa, at 2:46 UT Tuesday morning. The fireball, which could be brilliant, will travel west to east (from azimuth = 281 degrees) at a relative atmospheric impact velocity of 12.8 km/s and arrive at a very low angle (19 degrees) to the local horizon. It is very unlikely that any sizable fragments will survive passage through the Earth’s atmosphere.

And don’t get me started about Apophis in 2036.

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