Some Knowledge

What I want to know is not “will the earth be hit by an asteroid” but “why do they have so many TV shows about the earth being hit by an asteroid.”  Seriously, I was watching the tube last night.  It seemed like a perfectly normal TV show about space.  Then it sunk in.  The show was all about how the dinosaurs went extinct from a giant meteor impact.  Why does every science show on TV have to have some kind of cataclysmic explosion?  Why does every program have to have some end of the world scenario?

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that at some time in the future earth will be hit by a big meteor.  It may be millions of years before this happens.  It may happen tomorrow.  We simply do not know about all the rocks that are flying around in space.  Can you prepare for a giant asteroid collision?  The answer is no.  You can not even do anything about the fact that space junk falls on earth.  There is a constant stream of meteors that collide with earth.  Most of them are really small, like grains of sand.  Why does the media have to make such a big deal about something that is not likely to happen?  The government even set up a website to answer people’s questions about asteroids striking the earth.   I blame Hollywood.  They make movies about disasters all the time.  Why not make a movie about rocks falling from the sky and killing people?  So what if it almost never happens.  It might happen.

Yes, there are asteroids whose orbits cross  earth orbit.  Yes, it is possible that a very large rock could strike the earth.  Yes, it has happened before.  It is more likely that you will be struck by lightning.  You don’t see Hollywood making many movies about the dangers of lightning storms.  If something is not very likely to happen and there is nothing you can do about it anyway, why worry?  Why consume so much of the mass media with nonsense about what a disaster it would be if an asteroid struck the earth?  It’s all silliness.

Every time I see one of these programs it reminds me of the children’s story about Chicken Little and the sky is falling.   Are people really so simple that they would get all worried about an asteroid or a meteor?  This is just another case of the mass media trying to control the population’s thought patterns.  Maybe Hollywood has a stake in selling meteor insurance.  I don’t know.  It would be nice if they started making science programs about science and stopped making apocalyptic nonsense about disasters that will probably never happen.