Asteroid 21-07-2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That’s right, do not put appointments on your agenda for June, 30th 2016.
It will be the second Asteroid Day and the people who read this blog should know how much important for everybody it is. What? Haven’t ever heard about it? Well, shame on you. 🙂
This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Malay Wikipedia for the 44th week, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Imagine a meteor, or a comet, tumbling its way thru our solar system, almost invisible against the darkness of space. A mass bigger than a mountain, moving at tens of thousands of kilometers for hour. Let’s say that this piece of rock is mainly composed by iron ore and silicates. Then imagine what kind of damage this meteor could do if its trajectory put it too near our planet.
Do you remeber the dinosaurus?
The meteor-shower of February, 15th over the town of Chelyabinsk makes me think about old soviet Russia, back in the times of USSR.
Back then in that district (Oblast in russian) there were two different nuclear plants, a couple of that ghost towns named with a name and a number (Chelyabinsk-70, for istance) whose existance was ignored in the West until the Berlin wall falls down, back in the 1989. Same place, same Oblast, around here there were tank industries and a lot of military facilities.
In a range of 200 km there are a lot of interesting places such as the test grounds for the Tsar Bomb, a couple of military airfields and at least another military research facility. Plus, this is a test zone for the most recent ballistic programs (such as the brand new “undetectable” multi stadium ICBM).
You know, there is a russian word “disinformatja” that keep popping up in my mind, raising questions in a whining voice. What if our russian friends have lost control of any experiment? What if the debris that fall all over the town and its surroundings are not from a meteor? What kind of danger such fragments pose to the locals? And if the russian military shooted down anything, what the hell they shooted at?
I hope the best for all the injuried. They don’t deserve that kind of heavy rain, no matter what origin it got.
(Many thanks to James Copertino, who raised an eyebrow about this “meteor shower” and makes me think about this matter).
Angelo Benuzzi 