What Really Matters: We Almost Got Wiped Out

Stimulus shmimulus.  It’s all meaningless if the planet gets hit by an asteroid.  And that almost happened Monday when a 200 foot wide rock called 2009 DD45 (much like the one above) zoomed by about 40,000 miles from earth.  That’s just about twice as far away as many telecommunication satellites.

Experts are describing this as “a wafer-thin encounter” and is likely to return and be a future danger. And DD45 isn’t the only threat coming our way.

The fast detection and observation of 2009 DD45 is a major “trophy” for the Siding Spring Survey which is jointly operated by the Australian National University and the University of Arizona and supported by NASA funding.

Like the much larger earth crossing asteroid Apophis, which will pass even closer to Earth on 13 April 2029, and may then suffer enough gravitational deflection to subsequently collide with us on 13 April 2036, 2009 DD45 is also trophy that will remain at large until humans shift it into a safer orbit, or it runs into us.

So, while we’re worried about our day-to-day obstacles and whether the stimulus package will work, something much larger may well come along and put us out of our misery.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.