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Why Are Asteroids News?

I listened to a report on NPR this morning about an asteroid that will come close to Earth. Well, close in cosmic terms. It will be 3.1 million miles away. And my response is, as it is to so much material, 'why is this news?'

An asteroid strike is thought to have killed the dinosaurs, and I think the geologic and paleontologic evidence is very good. I suppose this has made any asteroid within 'x' miles of Earth important as a near-miss. Well, why?

There is absolutely ntohing we can do about it. We can not change the trajectory of the planet on which we live, and we can not change the trajectory of an asteroid. Mos tasteroid strikes are not fatal to dominant life. We had a significant strike in Siberia less than 6 months ago, and we are still here.

Further, we can not land on, explore for minerals or live on an asteroid. While all these are ideas, they are nowhere near reality yet. Thus there is no intrinsic interest in a piece of rock flying by at high speed.

Also, under ordinary conditions no one sees asteroids. No one takes an evening walk and says 'Gee the asteroids look great tonight'. There is no rhyme 'asteroid light, asteroid bright, first asteroid I see tonight, etc'.

So what is the fascination? Why an NPR segment devoted to an item that does not threaten us, that we can't see and that has no meaningful significance to humans?

I think these features make asteroids the perfect embodiment of the Bogey Man. Instead of an unseen creature hiding under the bed to terrify children we have a scientifically verified and trackable object that threatens us in some vague way. And we can't see it. Asteroids are the Bogey Man of adults. And asteroids let us fantasize about leaving the planet we are polluting and killing. And asteroids are a subliminal representation of everything the Bogey Man is- inchoate fear, inchoate rage, a sense of doom. All these negative feeling sget to sublimated into worry about a pile of rock that is not going to hit us.

Where aer Godzilla, It, She, Them and the Blob when you need them? Oh, they're all living on the asteroid that is going to hit us......

Ted

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