The cosmos is throwing rocks at us!
A couple of hours ago, an asteroid passed within about 17,000 miles of Earth - that's closer than the altitude our geosynchronous satellites orbit at.
And of course, early this morning, a meteor made life interesting for the residents of Chelyabinsk, Russia.
So what's on your minds?
Have a good weekend, but keep an eye on the sky! Open thread.
If you look in the west southwest about 30 mins. after sunset (& assuming you have a clear sky), about ten degrees above the horizon you'll see Mercury. That's a rare sight.
Posted by: oddjob | February 15, 2013 at 04:46 PM
I just spent a week outside Seattle. That's more than half the year spent away from home thus far. Now waiting at the SeaTac airport for the flight home.
There's been snowballs; but, no falling rocks here.
Hope all is well with everyone else.
Posted by: Eric Wilde | February 15, 2013 at 07:24 PM
I don't dare look at the meteor footage -- I like to get to sleep at night. Stills are quite terrifying enough.
From the folks who know: amount of water or frozen carbon dioxide made this one what it was.
Eric, I hope you get to use all those ffms for a trip you love, family in tow.
Posted by: nancy | February 15, 2013 at 08:02 PM
oddjob, we've been seeing planets on clear nights.
good travels home, eric!
ltc and nancy -- interesting. around here, serious rumbling is usually an earthquake; but if it was loud enough to shatter windows and bright, i'd go immediately to bombs, probably nuclear. except we wouldn't be melted.
Posted by: kathy a. | February 15, 2013 at 08:42 PM
Hey l-t c,
How's the achilles tendon healing?
The abundant meteor footage -- those crazy Russians and their dash cams -- is pretty friggin' amazing.
I hope someone has pointed out to Barack Obama that as our Black President he has an obligation to be ready for an asteroid threatening earth.
Posted by: Sir Charles | February 15, 2013 at 09:16 PM
SC - the tendon's healing well; I got my walking boot Wednesday of last week, and have been back at work since, except for time off for physical therapy. The PT is pleased with my progress (should be; I've been doing my exercises religiously) as was the orthopedist when I last saw her.
The biggest limitation now is that I can't drive, and it'll be a few weeks before I'm cleared for that. (Good thing my wife and I work at the same place.) But I can get around the office and the house, including up and down stairs, with no walker or cane, just the boot.
So life is about as good as it can be, given the initial fact of the rupture. I got a two-week rest from work, which I desperately needed but couldn't have otherwise gotten given how busy things are, and now I'm more like my old self there - I'd really been dreading going to work for the last few months before the accident, which is not the way I like to live my life, and it's been many years since I felt like that at any job. Now my mind's very much in the game, I'm full of energy, and life is good.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | February 15, 2013 at 10:46 PM
l-tc, Glad to hear you're on the mend and feeling upbeat.
Thinking seriously about meteorites for the first time has left me feeling like the young Alvy Singer. "What's the use?"
Then there's Neil deGrasse Tyson's Take: Man, the universe is out to kill you!
Posted by: nancy | February 16, 2013 at 09:34 PM
A twitter sentiment:
A little gallows humor never hurts. :)
Posted by: nancy | February 16, 2013 at 10:23 PM
I love pourmecoffee.
I'm writing from beautiful Kona, Hawaii (Big Island), where the spousal unit & I just attended music camp (slack key guitar for him, Uke for me). I managed to stumble through the advanced class this year. Got an incredible new Uke in Hilo yesterday.
Re the meteor: I read on Balloon Juice that the sci-fi writer Charls Stross was pointing out that if that had happened in the 1980's when we were all watching The Day After and listening to Reagan's Red-baiting an event like that might have actually started a nuclear war, rather than being an occasion for helmet- and dash-cam-jokes. Talk about a sobering thought....
Posted by: Beckya57 | February 17, 2013 at 04:10 PM
All right, who's the weisenheimer who put MSM idiot Joe Scarborough's name in the captcha settings??? Ha ha!!
Posted by: Beckya57 | February 17, 2013 at 04:12 PM
Becky,
Hope you are enjoying Hawaii. It is bitterly cold here today back in our nation's capital -- a fact further driven home when I realized my wife had driven off today with the keys to both cars. So I had to walk the mile or so to my office -- hey, it is uphill.
I had similar thoughts about the meteor and what it's Cold War implications might have been. Slightly scary.
The captcha words often strike me as having a sly bent.
Posted by: Sir Charles | February 18, 2013 at 11:01 AM
The last combat veteran of World War I died. It looks like the Great War has finally faded from memory into history.
Posted by: Joe S | February 18, 2013 at 11:48 AM
Then there's Neil deGrasse Tyson's Take: Man, the universe is out to kill you!
I think all the 1950's & 60's optimism about imminent space travel for everyone very, very badly underestimated just how truly hostile most of the universe is to life as we know it.
Posted by: oddjob | February 19, 2013 at 08:46 AM
Whoa. Photos here. I'm trying to imagine this experience with added sound and other sensations.
Posted by: nancy | February 21, 2013 at 10:21 PM