Because that's the first thing you think about besides toilet paper....

One reason we need astronomers and scientists...

They will save our asses from instant death.

 

Don't think an umbrella will help ....

This animation from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico plots the positions of all the known asteroids in the solar system in 1980, and adds new ones as they are discovered. The pace and patterns of asteroid discovery give a neat visual illustration of the history of solar system exploration.

New asteroids appear in flashes of white, to make them easy to pick out. The final color codes for how close the object comes to Earth: Asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit are shown in red, “Earth approachers” that come to 1.3 times the Earth-sun distance are yellow, and all others are green. The bunches of new asteroids follow Earth in its orbit, usually in the region directly opposite the sun (that is, in the Earth’s night sky). Some clusters appear on the line between Earth and Jupiter, the side effects of surveys looking for Jovian moons.

In the mid-1990s, the pace of discovery picks up, showing the results of automated sky surveys. By 2001, the area just outside the orbit of Mars is filled in by a bright green ring of asteroids, and it keeps getting denser.

The beginning of 2010 brings a new pattern of discovery, with new asteroids fanning out on either side of the Earth. This new pattern is thanks to the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), an infrared space telescope that is expected to find hundreds of new asteroids by seeking their heat rather than their light.

And to follow up the theme:

Top 5 Ways the Universe Could Wipe Out Humankind

Update... this guy has waaaaaayyyyy too much fun with a simulated asteroid strike:

We're all gonna diiiiiieeeeeee!

The End of America as we know it.

The End of the World:

Or these neat options:

Update: well, darn. Removed from YouTube. I'll post them again if they reappear.

Update: They were YouTubes of Gareth Edwards' END:DAY movie about several different ways the world could experience a world wide disaster: tsunami, virus, supervolcano, Hadron Collider, meteors.... it had it all.

Oh, well then...never mind

We'll save the hysteria for something more important:

A supposed asteroid, which it was feared was going to have a near-miss with Earth next week, has been identified as a spacecraft.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen's University Astrophysics Research Centre told the BBC there is "no longer any need for concern".

"The 'asteroid' has been identified as the European spacecraft Rosetta," he said.

The spacecraft is en route to a comet near Jupiter.

Earlier this year, the unmanned Rosetta craft, which has already flown past Earth once, passed within 250 km (150 miles) of Mars.

In a precise move, the probe used the planet's gravity to change course on its voyage to the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet.

(re-edited to make sense of the heading...*sheesh*)

The nuclear bomb and the giant slingshot ideas failed?

Going through nine different ways to save Earth from a meteor, it was decided this was feasible:

London, England (AHN) - Scientists at the University of Glasgow say that flying mirrors could save earth from a catastrophic asteroid collision. In assessing a number of plans for diverting asteroids that could hit the Earth, the researchers have concluded that mirrors offer the best solution.

The plan called "solar sublimation" focuses space-based mirrors onto the object to heat it up and deflect its course. An object 150 meters across could be diverted by 100 mirrors in just a few days, according to the researchers.

Scientists now plan to use up to 5,000 mirrors to focus a beam of sunlight on to the asteroid that would in turn melt the rock and alter its orbital path away from earth.
The announcement came after the scientists compared nine different methods of deflecting near earth objects - asteroids and comets.

Project leader Dr. Massimiliano Vasile told the BBC, "Asteroid impacts are a real threat. The Tunguska explosion in 1908 devastated an area bigger than Greater London.

"With only 10 spacecraft flying in formation, each with a 20-metre mirror, we could deflect a similar sized asteroid into a safe orbit in about six months. Our studies show that this technology is genuinely feasible," he added.

And more astronomy:

Hawaii (AHN) - A tiny galaxy located 6 billion light-years away, or nearly halfway across the universe has recently been spotted and weighed by astronomers at an observatory in Hawaii.

It was discovered by Phil Marshall of the University of California, Santa Barbara and his colleagues. The galaxy was dubbed SDSSJ0737+3216. It is 100 times lighter than Earth's own Milky Way and it is the smallest galaxy ever identified at that distance.

It is about half the size and approximately one-tenth the "weight" of typical small galaxies found closer to Earth.

SDSSJ0737+3216 was discovered using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

It was made visible by a phenomenon called gravity lensing, whereby light from a distant source is warped by the gravitational field of another massive object located directly in front of it.

I love stories like these. Scientists discovering stuff.

Chose your own ending of the world

BBC movie about all the dangers we face on earth. We can thank Whig for scaring us even more. Choose one.