Are we all gonna die Monday night?

Well, no. At 9:30 PM on Monday night, an asteroid named 2011 MD, approximately 60 feet wide, will pass the earth at a distance of about 7500 miles. It should be visible with a small telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.

The object was only detected on Wednesday. While there is no chance of it hitting earth, it will sling-shot around our planet at a height where it could hit or disrupt our satellites in high-earth orbit, such as our communications, weather and GPS satellites.

This will be the second close encounter this year so far. Earlier this year, a similar sized object came within 3500 miles of hitting the earth.

And on November 8^th, asteroid 2005 YU55, 400 yards across and tipping the scale at 50 million tons, will fly inside the orbit of the moon.

Let’s not forget there’s the infamous Comet Elenin, scheduled to come within 22 million miles of earth this fall. Some people with very lively imaginations believe this Comet will cause the end of the world. http://progressive-charlestown.blogspot.com/2011/05/reset-doomsday-clock.html

Which reminds me – the Charlestown Democrats are going to be doing another tag sale this fall and we’re looking for suitable donated goods. We got a good response from Harold Camping’s followers last May who loaded up the CDTC “Not the End of the World” tag sale with goods they no longer thought they needed. We sold their stuff back to them the following week. If you have stuff to donate, contact Frank Glista.

Now, getting back to this asteroid. There is a network of scientists watching the skies for such threats and the US provides a small amount of funding for NASA to operate a Near Earth Object project to detect threats to earth. Obviously not enough, since tonight’s object was found less than three days ago.

But suppose we decided to take these very real threats seriously and detected a planet-killer heading our way. With enough lead time, there might even been a way to divert the object from a course that will effectively end civilization as we know it. It will take a huge and rapid mobilization of resources to have any chance at survival. Imagine the political debate in Congress and on the campaign trail:

Rep. Ron Paul and his son Senator Rand Paul: The government has no business getting involved in this. There is no mention of asteroids in the Constitution.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: Whatever money the President or my Democratic colleagues want to spend addressing this issue will have to be offset by cuts to Social Security.

Newt Gingrich: The President is making this up.

Grover Norquist: Whatever you do, don’t raise taxes.

Rep. Michelle Bachman: If the Lord decides it’s our time, then so be it.

Speaker of the House John Boehner: [weeping uncontrollably]

Rep. Paul Ryan: Our deficit is too large to consider funding a new federal program. This proposal is unsustainable.

Sarah Palin: Well, if every red-blooded patriotic American exercised his or her Second Amendment rights and we all locked and loaded at the right time, we could blast that pesky thing right out of the sky.

Author: Will Collette