So today in addition to being subject to a near miss – the cosmic equivalent of being given a close shave by a Samurai with his (or her) Katana – we also had an unannounced visitation by an asteroid that crash-landed in Russia causing a considerable amount of property damage, and more seriously some injuries.
Now this doesn’t happen every day, but in the lifetime of the Earth it does happen pretty frequently. As is evident from our nearest neighbour which looks as though it has been bombarded in some sort of celestial war. And indeed, the evidence can be seen on Earth if you look close enough; and that list just includes the largest impacts – events such as Russia today simply don’t show up.
Now there is not a great deal we can do about this as individuals, so as individuals we may as well forget about it – the chances of being killed by a meteorite are pretty remote but as it turns out only slightly less likely than being killed by a terrorist!
As a species however, we have reached the point where we can start doing something about it. If that is, we want to invest the resources into doing so. Admittedly we have started looking but simply knowing we’re all going to be killed by a dinosaur-killer isn’t enough – we should be able to do something about it. Perhaps there isn’t much we can do about a dinosaur-killer.
But we should be able to do something about smaller dangers. If we want to.
If we told the military that they will have to change the kinds of really expensive toys they get, we can probably start some form of meteor defence programme without having a dramatic effect on the economy. After all, ultimately a large meteor is as dangerous as an all-out nuclear war.