Word: asteroidal
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Steven Spielberg couldn't have asked for better publicity. Just as his big-budget asteroid-disaster movie, "Deep Impact," prepares to do the rounds, the astronomers announce that there actually is a chunk of rock out there that's set to rendezvous with the Earth -- in 30 years' time...
...Asteroid 1997 XF11 -- hardly a name to set the pulse racing -- will pass within 30,000 miles of us at 1:30 p.m. EST, Thursday, October 26, 2028 (set your watches now). Chances are it'll whizz past and give Europe -- then in darkness -- a pretty light show. "It would actually be a rather nice thing to see," says Dr. Brian Marsden of the International Astronomical Union. His colleagues aren't so sure. "This is the most dangerous one we've found so far," fretted Jack Hills of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "It scares me, it really does...
...doomed to a similar fate--cheering obliviously while the killer asteroid draws near or the sea level rises to our chins. Already there are signs that sports may go the way of American politics and degenerate into a rarefied pastime for the rich. The real game now is about billionaire team owners trading millionaire athletes, many of them spoiled brats and all of them dedicated to selling us sneakers and cereals--while the public coughs up for yet another downtown stadium and the networks lay out billions for TV rights. This late 20th century sports biz is a spectacle perhaps...
...movie not to insult your intelligence. For every 50 brain-numbing flicks like Twister, Volcano or Con Air, we might be blessed with one smart film like Pulp Fiction or Fargo. Hollywood is now in the business for the masses--"The audiences want earthquake, volcano, flood, tornado and asteroid movies, so that's what we'll give them," the studio execs smugly think to themselves...
...that the NASA researchers are taking this lightly. Nature even took the unusual step of printing their rebuttal in the same issue. "There's a lot going on in the (scientific) community of trying to ?shoot this down,? " Everett Gibson, co-leader of the agency's asteroid team, told the Associated Press. He added that he was "more convinced than ever" of the fossil's authenticity. And so the debate continues to rage ? to be settled, perhaps, only when the little green men come forward in person...