Armageddon is a religious term. It refers the battle at the end of the world and of course to a corny movie starring Bruce Willis. The end of the world, especially if it happens quickly rather than through a slow painful degradation such as some environmentalists and writers predict will hold a strong religious significance for many. When somethnig comes out of the blue it feels like fate. It is human nature to think so.
On Febraury 15th, 2013 a near-Earth asteriod shot through our skys. What comes from above stirs the religious impulse in many. It missed us by 17,200 miles. That might seem like a far miss, but in terms of astronomy it was a close thing.
For those observing the asteriod working for NGOs and governments around the world there was the thought that this could be an Armageddon moment. Sadly we had no time to put together a space mission of bold demolitionists to blast the problem out of the heavens.
Rather we would be have been fated to sit by and wait for the end. Funding in space launches, exploration and new frontiers havs dropped massively since the end of the cold war. We just couldn’t detect the threat or respond intime at the present moment.
The only thing to do is to find your favourite place in the world. Mine is Thong Nai Pan in Thailand. Have a cocktail, go wild and go for a swim in the ocean and wait for the end. I’d like to do all this with my family. Since I don’t live in Thailand but in the States I’m going to find it hard to make my final wish come true.
But this simple thought experiment is a great tool for discovering where you should really take your next holiday.
Joking aside, astronomy, staring at the night sky can reveal to you how fragile lfe on earth is, and how a cosmic random event can take away what precious little life there seems to be in the universe.
