Deep space explorer facing the deep-six
From the time I was a little girl and would gaze up at the stars with my dad and shared the wondering if there was a dad and daughter on another planet looking at us and wondering the same thing, I've been fascinated with astronomy.
I'm beginning to hear, even in the news, about an asteroid of significant size that will whiz disconcertingly close to our planet in 2027, and possibly even more dangerously close a few years later. I hope to be alive at that time to see just what comes of it.
Neil de Grasse Tyson, astrophysicist, explained on C-Span recently that this asteroid, if it did collide with Earth and landed in an ocean, would completely wipe out coastal cities. However, nobody need die, because we'd have sufficient warning and would be able to go somewhere else. The second fly-by is the one to be more worried about, he says. Even now scientists are working on plans to nudge the asteroid into a different orbit when it comes close the first time. But the nudge better be a good one, because the wrong nudge will just make it collide somewhere else on earth. Can you picture that? American scientists nudge an asteroid to land in, oh, say, well, whatever country we feel like invading but don't have the funds or manpower at the time to do the job.
We think we're safe. We're not. I think we know that at an intellectual level. Some of my fiber artist colleagues are concerned about using only materials that will last at least 200 years. In the art world, you learn to speak the language of archival, acid-free, and other terms. I don't have a problem with that. Yet at the same time, we might have under fifty years left as a species, and that's only looking at things from the point of view of a certain asteroid already discovered. Though many of us will have already gone, most of our children and grandchildren will still be here.
I don't have any answers. I don't even know what the questions might be. It's just interesting to think that our immediate heirs might have to deal with something we can't even imagine.
What's sad is the lack of available funding for the best equipment to track this asteroid. I suppose that is just part of the larger picture where we don't find the funds for things that really matter. Global warming, education, poverty, starvation…
Funny thing, that. The funds exist. And the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to widen, and we continue to support a lifestyle that makes that possible.
