2012 DA 14: A Cosmic Shot Across Our Bow

I figured I'd give you a break from rape/football stories and discuss geology instead. Lots of space stuff getting talked about the past couple days. God tried to take out Russia with a meteorite burst in the sky, the largest such explosion in over a century. And then later that day a 50-yard asteroid (2012 DA 14) came within 17,000 miles of Earth. 17,000 miles doesn't sound very close. New York City to the South Pole is 7,800 miles, and that's pretty far. But when one considers most of our satellites are more than 17,000 miles away, a big f**k rock getting that close is kind of humbling. I was so freaked out, I almost dialed up Deep Impact on Netflix

(Deep Impact is the superior late 1990s big rock from space gonna kill us all unless we send a space shuttle to stop it movie, as opposed to Armegedon . . . Hotwife hates that movie, and I can't stand Aerosmith post-1993 . . . and Deep Impact shows us what life is like with a black president, so it's WAY more realistic).

ANYWAY, I've got meteorites on the brain today. Curious as to the biggest impact in the US? It's in Arizona. A lot of big rocks have hit Canada (I thought Rush, Neil Young, and Voivod were the biggest rocks to hit Canada. I was wrong). The biggest one hit down Mexico way, and probably killed my future pet T-Rex. Environmental Grafitti was nice enough to put a concise slide show of big rocks hitting Earth together.

If you're still reading, waiting for this little blog post to culminate in some great bit of wisdom, here you go: s**t blowing up is cool, especially when it's a space rock. It's like an organic nuke. Kick back, crack a brew, and wait for the next Tunguska!