The Sky Is Falling
They said the likelihood of it happening was “millions or maybe billions to one,” but those odds no longer mean much in the wake of this week’s sensational satellite collision in outer space.
Simply put, the impossible has happened.
And now that it’s happened, the potential fallout (get it?) from the impact could be much more than anyone bargained for.
When a defunct Russian satellite collided with its active American counterpart 485 miles above Siberia five days ago, the crash created two clouds of debris that are now circling the planet at 17,000 miles per hour – where they are likely to remain for an estimated 10,000 years.
Wait, is anybody worried about this?
NASA is …
In fact, the agency even has a theory to explain the problem we’re now facing.
It’s called “collisional cascading,” and it involves an initial impact creating thousands of subsequent collisions.
Think of it as a non-linear, multi-car pile up – only thousands of times faster and without any honking horns.
Scientists are particularly concerned about the debris from the collision striking the Hubble Telescope, which American taxpayers have spent over $6 billion on over the years.
Frankly, we’re just worried about all that space junk hitting a Verizon satellite …







Comments
By Wes Wolfe on February 14th, 2009 at 4:38 am
Did you see the story on WIS about weird shit crashing through roofs in Newberry County? Could be time to take ye olde wifi to the basement.