The Hindu Business Line : Relief in asteroids

Why cannot a wayward asteroid hit planet earth and end all our miseries? There would be no stock market gyrations, thus no resultant impoverishment of investors; no farmer suicides, so not Budget largesse for them; no US imperialism to contend with, and no controversy about a nuclear deal. We would then all start anew, the “we” meaning those fortunate to have survived the cataclysm. Who knows, the “we” would probably take billions of years to evolve , assuming that the cataclysm would be one as cataclysmic as the one which, reportedly, wiped off the dinosaurs from the face of the earth.

Expected collisions

Indeed, why cannot our astronomers tell us precisely when such a hit will take place, instead of beating about the bush and saying that asteroid 12345 RRC is on collision course but may miss our planet by 50,000 miles in the year 4321 AD? We have heard enough of such expected collisions; why cannot we get more specific information, like that about a hit 5,000 years ago, which has just been splashed in the papers? Not that it really matters because none of us will be around at the time, perhaps even as vague concepts. Yes, maybe up in the heavens or down in purgatory, but that is a matter of perspective, and what does a point of view matter when we are discussing “events” which defy the definition of space and time?

What leads to strong suspicion that we are actually pawns in a huge conspiracy, the object of which is to deliberately keep the date of Doomsday away from us, is that while we have mastered the art of pinpointing hits stretching back into past millennia, we can only point to probability when it comes to future events of the same kind. Thus, how else can one explain the report on Tuesday morning which told us that scientists had been to able pinpoint the location of an asteroid-crash which happened in 3123 BC, relying on inputs such as a tablet discovered 150 years ago by the legendary Layard and a “computer programme” that can reportedly “reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago”.

Layard’s tablet is said to be a copy of a Sumerian astronomer’s notebook “recording events in the sky on June 29, 3123 B C” which, among other things, described the passage of a large celestial object “travelling across the constellation Pisces”. The computer programme — the invention of the modern human mind — was then used to pinpoint the trajectory of the object and it was found to correspondent “to within one degree” to an impact at the town of Kfels in the Austrian Alps. There is, of course, no crater, or the remnant of a gigantic depression in the ground, at the spot for the simple reason that the object crashed into mountain terrain. But there are telltale signs of a giant landslide that occurred in the region around this time, which has led to the pinpointing of the hit.

Calculations about tomorrow

Why cannot such calculations be done about “tomorrow”? Powerful telescopes of all kinds can detect the faintest movement in the heavens, and we still have the “computer programme” which can tell us about the when and the where. It is possible that, perhaps, nothing yet has been found in the skies that is destined to hit the sixth milestone on the road to Nagpur from Coimbatore in the year 8008 AD. It is also possible, perhaps probable, that if an Indian politician is in any way associated with these unworldly exercises, the announcement will be made to coincide with an election campaign!

Such is the stuff of life nowadays.

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY

More Stories on : Science & Technology | View Point

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Inflation buster

‘Agri-business will have to rise to global challenges’

London Gatwick and Chennai — The tale of two airports

Relief in asteroids

Empowering urban local bodies to provide better facilities

Securities Markets — Regulation lessons for India

Rational economics

Corporate taxes