Save the Date: April 13th, 2036...

It's a bird! It's a plane! No it's, it's, uh-oh! Kaboom!

The other morning I was channel surfing on my Slingbox.  I watched an interesting interview between Leno and astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.  So I did some more research on what he was talking about.  This is what I found.

Let me start from the beginning....literally.  You see in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.  The heavens in this case is a generically vague term for everything else floating in space and the universe that's not the Earth.  Well about 5 years ago one of these floating objects, otherwise known as a meteor (named Apophis), was discovered.  Not that big of a deal because there are millions of asteroids and meteors in our solar system and to discover a new one doesn't seem so novel right? Wrong!  After Apophis' discovery, astrophysicists using calculations and supercomputers (a bit more powerful than my TI-84) came to the conclusion that on April 13th, 2036 it has a strong chance of hitting Earth somewhere between  Las Vegas and off the Southern California coast.  Keep in mind that Apophis, aptly named after the Egyptian demon god of darkness and chaos, is neither nearly as big as the one that took out the dinosaurs, nor the one that took out Bruce Willis in 1998.

It's only about 248 meters in radius, but still forceful enough to wipe out a city or two.  If you don't believe me you can look it up yourself or you can wait til April of 2029 when Apophis does a nice little fly-by, buzzing our collective towers a mere 500 miles from Earth.  It's not until 7 years later that it actually hits Earth.  What's my point in all of this?  Well firstly, stay away from L.A. or Vegas in 2036, secondly I'll be 59 years old by the time it hits.  That seems like a long time.  So hopefully by then we'll have a plan ready and we won't have to recruit some maverick oil-drillers to nuke the damn thing seconds from reaching zero-barrier (my last Armageddon reference I promise). 

I have an idea, how about Survivor: Apophis.  We send up 10 contestants and make them compete to get off the asteroid.  The last one has to stay and press the nuke button to blow themselves and the rock into smithereens.  Cruel? Perhaps, but that's a reality show I'd watch.  Well that's all for now.  Oh yeah, Happy Chinese New Year!