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Study: Space Rock Impacts Not Random

Posted by samzenpus on from the meteor-season dept.

sciencehabit writes When it comes to small space rocks blowing up in Earth's atmosphere, not all days are created equal. Scientists have found that, contrary to what they thought, such events are not random, and these explosions may occur more frequently on certain days. Rather than random occurrences, many large airbursts might result from collisions between Earth and streams of debris associated with small asteroids or comets. The new findings may help astronomers narrow their search for objects in orbits that threaten Earth, the researchers suggest.

78 comments

  1. Can you say meteor shower ? by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

    http://stardate.org/nightsky/m...

    I knew you could

    1. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Statisticians living under light-polluted skies rediscover the phenomenon of "meteor shower" in data, news at 11.

    2. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by michelcolman · · Score: 1

      I've always known that here were a lot more meteors on tuesdays. So now science has finally figured that out, too.

    3. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Funny

      Can you say filthy arachnids?

      Time to invade klandathu! The only good bug is a dead bug I'd always say!

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    4. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For any of you wanting to use this at home, it is spelled:

      Klendathu (with an E).

    5. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The story is that they found a correlation which seems promising, but that doesn't make a compelling headline.

    6. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you like to know more?

    7. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by dywolf · · Score: 2

      Humorous, but that's not what theyre talking about.
      They are talking about space rocks large enough to air burst, to actually heat up enough to explode in the atmosphere, such as the Chelyabinsk object.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    8. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes: How do magnets work?

    9. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Thanks comic book store guy!

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    10. Re:Can you say meteor shower ? by mcswell · · Score: 1

      If you read the linked news release (which you should, it's very short), they're not talking about meteor showers, they're talking about the large meteors that blew up with a blast energy > 1kt. There were 33 of these detected in the 14 year study period, of which 9 pairs (= 18 of the blasts) occurred within one day of each other. The assumption of independence argument was invalidated at a very high confidence level, claim the authors.

      Not stated in the article is whether the 33 blasts had any connection with known meteor showers (or, I guess, previously unrecognized meteor showers). The original article (here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.0452...) does mention this possibility.

      I would be remiss not to mention that the statistical analysis may be flawed; a posting claiming just this is here https://astrostatistics.wordpr.... (IANAS.)

  2. "Random" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is, or is not, physics at a macro scale deterministic or not?

    If your answer is "yes, it is" please stop using "random" in this way. By "random" you mean "as yet unexplained," even if as a scientist/teacher/etc. your ego doesn't want you to admit that.

    Science benefits from clarity, not personally-comfortable equivocation.

    1. Re:"Random" by delt0r · · Score: 1

      Well predict what a dice roll will be. Yet that *is* based 100% on nothing but deterministic physics.

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      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    2. Re:"Random" by jandersen · · Score: 1

      Is, or is not, physics at a macro scale deterministic or not?

      Yes and no. Chaos theory concerns itself with problems that are, for all (or most) practical purposes, unpredictable. IOW, these problems are, in principle, deterministic, but in practice, very difficult to solve with any degree of precision. The weather, for example - if we know the starting conditions exactly for every point on the planet (and our models were perfect), we should be able to predict the temperature, wind speed etc exactly for any point in and time, ever, and for any spot on the planet. Unfortunately, small variations in start parameters result in huge variations in end results, which is why weather forecasting is so hit and miss.

      One has to accept that, in common usage, the word 'random' simply means 'chaotic' in the above sense.

    3. Re:"Random" by itzly · · Score: 1

      By "random" you mean "as yet unexplained"

      Which is the standard use of the word.

    4. Re:"Random" by 12WTF$ · · Score: 1

      I predict 100% certain the next roll will not be a 7

      --
      Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
    5. Re:"Random" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, similarly, "chaotic" is not an explanation, either. You can't evade not knowing what we don't know by wrapping it in another layer of abstraction.

      And, no, since most people in fact don't in fact mean "chaotic" when they say "random," not only don't I "have" to accept it, I definitely shouldn't.

    6. Re:"Random" by dkf · · Score: 1

      And, similarly, "chaotic" is not an explanation, either.

      Would you accept "inherently impossible to predict any significant length of time ahead"? It's all very well to pick on the reason for the unpredictability (be it quantum uncertainty or extreme sensitivity to initial conditions because of non-linearity) but at a functional level, the outcome is similar: some stuff just can't be predicted in detail long term, and will continue to be like this whatever we do.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    7. Re:"Random" by itzly · · Score: 1

      Even simpler: some stuff can't be predicted simply because you don't have sufficient knowledge of the process or its input conditions. A slot machine could be driven by a simple pseudo random generator, 100% predictable, as long as you know the algorithm and the seed. Since the gambler doesn't have access to this information, the spinning dials are completely random to him.

    8. Re:"Random" by delt0r · · Score: 1

      It is a d20. We are rolling for damage.

      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    9. Re:"Random" by rasmusbr · · Score: 2

      It's a bit worse than that. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you are not allowed by the laws of physics to simultaneously know all the initial conditions with arbitrarily high precision.

    10. Re:"Random" by smallfries · · Score: 1

      If the input conditions are somewhat more constrained than "the current state of the universe". If the algorithm can be executed on hardware that is any simpler than the physical machine.

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    11. Re:"Random" by jandersen · · Score: 1

      The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you are not allowed by the laws of physics to simultaneously know all the initial conditions with arbitrarily high precision.

      Perhaps - although this is actually not uncontroversial. There are many things surrounding the interpretation of QM that are not entirely certain - I am aware that every so often somebody comes up with a 'proof' that Heisenberg is more fundamental than simply an effect of our mode of observation. We measure properties of microscopic matter by bombarding it with particles and measuring the statistical outcome of a large number of events; the observation that particles are waves and waves have a minimum 'resolution' led to Heisenberg's original proposal, and many arguments have been put forward to the effect that this is a fundamental property of nature and impossible to get around, but there are works going on trying to achieve exactly that: a better resolution than Heisenberg's uncertainty allows us.

    12. Re:"Random" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I predict 95% certain the next roll will not be a 7

    13. Re:"Random" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your are aware that Heisenberg only applies to individual particles, no? The macro world is deterministic.

    14. Re:"Random" by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1

      One has to accept that, in common usage, the word 'random' simply means 'chaotic' in the above sense.

      That doesn't make it acceptable in scientific usage.

    15. Re:"Random" by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 2

      Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is just an application of the Fourier uncertainty principle to the quantum position and momentum wavefunctions. Since those are a Fourier pair, the Fourier uncertainty principle applies. So it's not a matter of which interpretation you pick, it's about whether QM is correct. If the behavior of quanta is not wholly determined by their wavefunctions then QM is wrong, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle might be violated, since the true functions for position and momentum may not be Fourier pairs. This is widely considered to be extremely unlikely. Also, if spacetime is quantized (there's a minimum possible distance and a minimum possible time, and all times/distances are integer multiples of these minima) then the wavefunctions wouldn't be continuous, so the uncertainty principles might not be applicable. Loop Quantum Gravity is one theory that posits this.

      --
      Not a sentence!
    16. Re:"Random" by amorsen · · Score: 1

      You can trivially make large events depend on nuclear decay, thereby breaking macro world determinism.

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      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    17. Re:"Random" by jandersen · · Score: 1

      But aren't we now finding ways around the Fourier uncertainty? I believe there was a recent Nobel price for advances in microscopy.

      ... it's about whether QM is correct.

      That one is easy: QM is not correct. It is a model - ie. a best approximation etc, but there is almost certainly going to be something, somewhere that is not entirely covered by the model. Isn't that what we all hope for: that we discover something new and amazing?

      ... if spacetime is quantized (there's a minimum possible distance and a minimum possible time, and all times/distances are integer multiples of these minima) then the wavefunctions wouldn't be continuous...

      Ah, but continuity is a matter of topology. If space itself is quantized, the topology would have to be restricted to fit space, and wavefunctions may well be not only continuous, but also smooth, if a suitable geometry can be constructed. This, in a way, illustrates the gripes I have with QM; there is almost a culture of mysticism surrounding it (or its interpretation), that stops you from reaching a deeper understanding, because you expect it to be fundamentally impossible - so you tend to lapse back into a classical mode of consideration. Thus, the typical line of thought becomes something like "1) What would the classical scenario look like?, 2) Construct the Hamiltonian 3) Apply The Magical Transformation and get a differential equation, 4) Solve to get the wavefunction". Nowhere in this process is an understanding deeper than classical mechanics required, and that, I suspect, is why people keep talking about space being discontinuous. Einstein's genius, IMO, was that he understood that physics must be intrinsic to space, and that the resulting geometry plays a dominant role in how the laws of physics work. So, even if space turns out to be a finely minced subspace of an embedding, Cartesian space, that is not actually relevant, since all the physics - the 'reality' if you like - is confined to the geometry of that subspace, and the geometry is the only interaction there is between physical space and the embedding space.

  3. Say what now?? by drewsup · · Score: 1

    I would have thought this was common sense.
      Instead of believing The Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster likes to randomly through rocks at us from up on high, we instead correlate that higher meteor activity is linked to Earths passing through debris fields from existing comet trails, the SAME trails every X amount of years.
    Sounds like a story from the 1800's

    1. Re:Say what now?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fun part, of course, is figuring out when the FSM finalized the physical conditions that led to the giant rock falling to herald the arrival of a new form of pasta.

    2. Re:Say what now?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, rather unsurprisingly, the best way to troll, or refute, the FSM meme is to take it seriously.

  4. Now we know what days to hide by Required+Snark · · Score: 1

    YMMV, but I like top hide under my bed.

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
    1. Re:Now we know what days to hide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was rooting for Mondays or Wednesdays. Those are always the best days for hiding under a bed or an office desk.

  5. bar-room statisticians by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    It's even worse than that. Going by this quote, they're using it to mean even or homogeneous:

            contrary to what they thought, such events are not random, and these explosions may occur more frequently on certain days.

    You know, like if a coin comes up heads four times in a row that's "not random".

    As to the astronomy bit, this has been known since forever. The major ones have names and can even be predicted. Crapdot FTL.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:bar-room statisticians by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's even worse than that. Going by this quote, they're using it to mean even or homogeneous:

      contrary to what they thought, such events are not random, and these explosions may occur more frequently on certain days.

      You know, like if a coin comes up heads four times in a row that's "not random".

      Actually, that's not a very good analogy. The main pattern that they noticed is clustering of events over long periods of time . It would be more like if you had a coin that was weighted in such a way that it only came up heads about 1 time out of a 100 or something. You flipped it once per day.

      According to normal probability, if the only thing that's influencing the coin is just its weight that produces a 1 in 100 chance of heads, the pattern of heads should look relatively homogeneous over a long time span.

      Instead, what they tended to find was a lot of clustering of events -- so it would be like going for hundreds of days and then suddenly getting heads on 2 or 3 days in a row, then going again for hundreds of days without any heads again.

      In that case, it would be fair to say that there is something else influencing the distribution -- it's not just a "random" distribution you'd expect for a 1 in 100 chance of getting heads. Some other factor is leading to clustering.

      Just from looking briefly at the article, it doesn't seem to me that they have a long-enough timespan or enough events to claim strong evidence for a pattern. They basically come up with a 2% stat that this pattern could occur by chance -- sure, that's better than the standard 95% confidence interval for exploratory studies, but there are various statistical features of their study that could be giving them a false-positive here. But it's enough that further study may be warranted.

    2. Re:bar-room statisticians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not when you have a predictive set of reasons for why it develops a particular distribution. Whether talking about velocity of atoms in a gas or the distribution of minor bodies within the solar system, you take rather simple, well tested principles and derive how things evolve. Otherwise, might as well say using "parabolic arcs" to describe simple trajectories in a uniform field is also too mystical.

    3. Re:bar-room statisticians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The main pattern that they noticed is clustering of events over long periods of time."

      So, the same as with meteor showers. Not entire unexpected, i'd think.

      "not random" and "on certain days" (more on thursdays, less on mondays?) are unfortunate choices of words in this case.

    4. Re:bar-room statisticians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the Universe's random number generator is streaky because it is based off the clock cycle of the Universe? ;-)

    5. Re:bar-room statisticians by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      So, the same as with meteor showers. Not entire unexpected, i'd think.

      Not entirely unexpected, but -- to be clear -- this study is NOT talking about normal meteors in meteor showers (which are presumed to be clustered since they are typically remnants of a comet).

      Instead, this study is focusing on LARGER bodies (multi-kiloton impacts), most of which do not have a common origin like bits of a comet. Many scientists assume that they are random hunks of rock from the asteroid belt or some other collection that get perturbed from their normal orbit by interacting with Jupiter or something. Point being -- there's no actual reason why they should cluster together unless they originated from a body that fractured. From TFA:

      The paths followed by these objects are strongly perturbed, and exhibit fast and chaotic nodal precession over time-scales of ~10 Myr (see e.g. Ito & Malhotra 2006). It is therefore not surprising that most studies assume that the angular elements, in particular the longitude of the ascending node, of the orbits of near-Earth objects (NEOs) are randomly and uniformly distributed in the range 0-2 pi. For many, this intrinsic chaoticity necessarily means that they are completely random, and that all the impacts must be interpreted as uncorrelated events distributed according to Poisson statistics.

      In other words, many people -- who probably know much more about this than the average Slashdot poster -- have recognized there are many differences exhibited in the behavior of these big hunks of rock compared to meteor showers, and thus assume their origin is probably different. Which means there's no reason to assume the same sort of clustering.

      This study seems to show clustering. If this study seems valid, the next thing is to explain WHY this sort of clustering happens with large bodies. The authors suggest it may have something to do with planetary perturbations. In any case, it's probably not the same mechanism as meteor showers.

  6. bar-room statisticians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It'd be fun to point out to them that their usage of "random" is a more mystical explanation than "God did it," and gauge their reaction.

    CAPTCHA: invalids

  7. Politicians are stars? by Champaklal · · Score: 1

    Because then, we'd find many to threaten earth!

  8. Every Rock Is a Space Rock by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Technically.

  9. Klendathu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unless you are suggested the Bugs are up to something, the events are still random, they are just not uniformly distributed. Get it right!

  10. Not news! by aglider · · Score: 1

    Someone already said that God doesn't play dice. But I cannot remember the name ...

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re: Not news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dice is for wimps. God plays Texas Hold'em, like all tough hombres.

    2. Re: Not news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wanna hold 'em like they do in Texas, please,

      Fold 'em, let 'em, hit me, raise it, baby, stay with me (I love it)

      Love game intuition play the cards with Spades to start

      And after he's been hooked I'll play the one that's on his heart

      Can't read my

      Can't read my

      CAPCHA: flames

    3. Re:Not news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone already said that God doesn't play dice. But I cannot remember the name ...

      Look ... if you can't remember the name of Albert Einstein ... perhaps you're on the wrong fucking web site?

      Jesus fuck Slashdot has become infested with a lot of stupid idiots.

    4. Re:Not news! by MrLogic17 · · Score: 1

      That would be our mutual friend, Albert.

      http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A... (ctrl-F, dice, [enter])

    5. Re:Not news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you've been successfully trolled (old-school definition, relatively preferable), troll (newer usage, i.e. completely worthless).

    6. Re:Not news! by PPH · · Score: 1

      God plays 3 card monte.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  11. What's new? by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    Haven't we known this for like fucking ever?

  12. silly summary, real stats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    so they looked at *big* rocks, not small rocks. We know that small rocks often come in showers as comet tails or clouds of assorted crap that we pass through. This study was on the big rocks that are not known to be part of specfic meteor showers like the leonids or whatever. They were previously thought to be fairly random, however the tests they did basically prove that meteor impacts are not a particularly good source of entropy for /dev/random (well, apart from the multiple obvious reasons not to feed them into /dev/random, they are also not sufficiently random and unrelated to each other)

  13. Re: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, no. Standard usage to describe something as "random" and consider it thereby explained.

    If that is in fact what is meant, though, worthwhile to have that stated explicitly. Notable how often considering the distinction carefully is informative.

  14. I'm surprised... by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    ...that this is news?

    I'm not an astronomer, but I was pretty sure that the idea that the US passes through periodic 'clouds' of debris was as old as astronomy - how is this substantially different than the Leonid (passing through the debris left by comet Swift-Tuttle)or Perseid meteor shower (passing through the debris left by comet Tempel-Tuttle)?

    Personally, I've wondered if some of these could coincide with truly massive volcanic eruptions or meteorite impacts historically, the ones hefty enough to land earth rocks on the moon or Mars. Such an eruption would, it seems to me, leave a 'cloud' of very small debris with its own orbit that would logically impact earth's orbit at the point they were created.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:I'm surprised... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...that this is news?

      I'm not an astronomer, but I was pretty sure that the idea that the US passes through periodic 'clouds' of debris was as old as astronomy

      It's the United States of Earth now? When did that happen, news guy? Tell me more!

    2. Re:I'm surprised... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No no, the US is special. They are the only ones who pass through this cloud of debris.

    3. Re:I'm surprised... by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      That's true, but the celestial spheres are an orderly place. The math to predict an orbit is fairly straightfroward. (Castor is a better link if you want more than a quick overview.) Watching it go around the body it's orbiting is like watching the hands on a clock. So I don't find it particularly strange that if there's a bunch of loose junk on an orbit that intersects us, that we'd run through it on a regular basis. I'd be more surprised if it was just random.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    4. Re:I'm surprised... by argStyopa · · Score: 1

      Yeah, my stupid. Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that.

      -1, facepalm.

      --
      -Styopa
  15. It's not the small ones we need to worry about by jrumney · · Score: 1

    The small space rocks that shower the Earth at regular intervals are small because a big rock once collided with the Earth, sending debris into an orbit around the Sun that regularly intersects with the Earth's. Those rocks pose no current threat to the Earth, their damage was done at the time of mass extinctions past, or when the oceans were carved out, or what ever other distant past event they caused. The ones to worry about are the large interstellar rocks that haven't hit yet. So no, this does not help narrow the search for objects that threaten the Earth at all.

    1. Re:It's not the small ones we need to worry about by itzly · · Score: 1

      Given the odds, I worry more about not getting hit in traffic.

  16. Bad Journalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    From TFA:

    The data set also sports 16 pairs of events with three or fewer calendar daysâ(TM) difference, which for a random sample could be statistically expected only about 2.2% of the timeâ"a number of coincidences that is simply too high to be the result of chance alone

    No, sorry, do not pass go, do not collect $200

    If it is statistically expected 2.2% chance of the time is is entirely possible to be the result of chance alone. Specifically, you would expect it to be observed in one data set out of fifty. There's nothing magic about the 95% percentile used in biology, and there's a very good reason particle physicists insist on 6-sigma (0.000001%) deviations before calling a discovery "confirmed".

  17. It's the bugs, I tell you! by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Would you like to know more?

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  18. Wow! by nospam007 · · Score: 1

    Scientists discover Space Rock Friday!

  19. Ooh, news. 200 years later... by Mirar · · Score: 1

    Dear Slashdot, this has been known for almost 200 years.

    And I wouldn't be surprised if Newton also knew this 350 years go but forgot to write it down.

  20. Was anyone else... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hoping for something much cooler when they heard that impacts were "not random?"

  21. Hold on by barakn · · Score: 3, Informative

    To all the commenters claiming we've already known this for centuries... no, we haven't. There's no reason to presume a priori that large objects occur in "showers" like the smaller (ash particle to pea sized) objects that make up familiar meteor showers. And astrostatisticians are very unhappy with the quality of the statistics in this paper, and they are suggesting the null hypothesis can't be rejecting using better statistical tools: https://astrostatistics.wordpr...

    --
    "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
    1. Re:Hold on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There’s a less than 2% chance of finding nine such pairs in a random sample, the researchers note. "

      That is not a justification for saying it is NOT random.
      The opposite of random is systematic.

      I think the researchers here might be astrophysicists, but they have merely a lay-man's grasp on statistics.

    2. Re:Hold on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's no reason to presume a priori that large objects occur in "showers" like the smaller

      The summary claims it wasn't presumed for smaller objects, and people are contesting that. Search for "small space rocks", it's right there in the first sentence.

  22. Black Swan event by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The meteors are associated with old degassed comets which are as black as tar and very hard to see. One of these comet will eventually impact the earth. And no one will see it coming. It will be a "Black Swan" event.

  23. Well duh - they can't cover this up. by modi123 · · Score: 1

    contrary to what they thought, such events are not random,

    Random? Ask the good people on the Rodger Young who were attacked by a lobbed meteor from the Klendathu system, or the near 10 million lives lost in Buenos Aires when that rock landed. Good people. Innocent people. The SkyMarshal is gathering for an all out retaliatory strike to avenge the deaths. It would be an excellent time to step up and serve and become a citizen! Do your part now!

    Would you like to know more?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
    http://starshiptroopers.wikia....

  24. Klytus, I'm bored. by PhilHibbs · · Score: 1

    What plaything can you offer me today?

  25. Planet P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I say they are from Planet P; duh.

  26. We knew it was no accident! by cfalcon · · Score: 1

    http://www.theonion.com/articl...

  27. I've often wondered... by BellyJelly · · Score: 1

    why do meteorites "expode" in the atmosphere? Can someone post a simple explanation? Yes, I know stuff gets hot when it flies through the atmosphere at very high speeds, but what is the mechanism for a kilo/mega ton explosion? Why don't they just ablate (is that the right word)?

  28. Please, help stamp out postage! by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 1

    So you're just a little rock drifting in space, perhaps you have a bit of slow elliptical gig with the Sun or some heavy vector from rude encounters with other Astrobumps and potato-lumps. But these vectors have mostly cancelled each other and you're copa-centric with the solar system, just chillin'.

    Every now and then you wiggle-woggle as a giant vacuum cleaner that is Jupiter or Mars passes, which leaves you a bit perturbed but its song is so enticing. You do a little dusting now and then to spruce up the neighborhood and your day/night sides fill you with just enough electrostatic tickle and a tug of graviton tockle to gather little bits. Just a big lovable clump, like a giant iron-filled molar enjoying the solitude of space grooving on the universe.

    But the groove is changing. You are humming with beacons and bitcoms and bacon commercials, ringing with SATCOM beams and HF RTTY streams, and music and bouncy over-the-horizon PAVE PAWS and wave claws of a modern age. And music, voices! Millions of voices. Single sideband gwobbles and gwerps, AM throbby-bumps and gurgle-beats, quavering FM and chaotic barking bursty bits channelized and encrypted for your protection. Lissen up party people, meat is in the house. And it's talking.

    And IT is the source, that THING, a rolling blue ball with puffy white squiggles tumbling towards you. Clearly this is a bad place to be because it is headed in your direction and its inhabitants are too stupid or inconsiderate to move it aside.

    Its mass tugs at you as a thin layer of atmosphere sears blazing heat through your little rocky self. It becomes thicker and you dissolve in an explosion of heat and light. Your elementary particles will add mass to this malevolent menace as a few creatures point their stubby fingers at your death and say, "Ooooooooooooooo!".

    Then they will get on their cell phones and blabble over the radio accusing YOU of attacking THEM.

    Stoopid PEOPLE on their BIG BLUE DEATH MARBLE.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
  29. Of Course: Mondays! by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 1

    Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse after the weekend along comes a space rock to turn your already bad Monday into something even worse.

    Cheers,
    Dave

    --
    They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
    Ben