So, that asteroid. Good thing Trump won’t be in office in 2032. Well, it’s only a three percent chance it’ll hit us, but chances are things can’t get much worse anyway. It might be a good idea to make some plans now—but wait, we currently deny science is real and spend our time renaming bodies of water. Hmm, quite a pickle. If science were real it would tell us that an asteroid is not the same as a meteor, although it can become one. Back in high school astronomy class—yes, our Sputnik-era high school had its own planetarium—I learned that the difference between a meteoroid, a meteor, and a meteorite. Want to go to school? Here’s the quick version: a meteor is something in Earth’s atmosphere (thus, meteorology). A meteoroid is a space rock, or even dust, in the solar system somewhere. Once it enters our atmosphere it becomes a meteor.
Most meteors burn up as shooting stars and never hit the ground. Yes, that atmosphere is a pretty good idea. If a piece does make it to the ground, that piece is a meteorite. Although your chances of being hit by a meteorite are minuscule, they can be impish. Not far from here, a few years back, a meteor smashed through the backseat window of a car after a couple had just put their groceries inside. The meteorite stopped inside a carton of ice cream. The window had to be replaced, and I can just imagine the conversation with the insurance company. Or take that meteorite heard on a recording for the first time. In Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, a doorbell camera caught a meteorite strike just outside someone’s house. Both of these were tiny critters, though.
Our 2032 friend is quite a bit bigger. Sometimes when large meteors heat up, they’ll explode in what is called a bolide. In western Pennsylvania back in January of 1987 (if I recall correctly) my brother and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle during the holiday break when our house shook. A loud bang had us worried—we lived in a refinery town, and explosions weren’t a welcome report. We ran outside to find neighbors also outside looking around. We later learned that a flaming fireball had gone overhead before exploding, a bolide. The actual explosion took place quite a distance from us, but sound travels in our atmosphere. So a possible near miss is scheduled eight years from now. Let’s hope people show some sense at the polls before that happens. Or we could just rename it MAGA and hope that it hits somewhere else.
