Saturday, November 22, 2008

Taking a Different Direction...

... the events of the past couple of days in the skies over Alberta made me think about life. No, not in a morose "what if the world ended tomorrow" kind of thing. Just life in general and how strange things can happen and you're not prepared for them. I watched the footage of the terribly bright meteor passing somewhere over Alberta on Thursday evening, and possibly landing in Saskatchewan and the vids are sooo eerie - almost like clips from War of the Worlds. I would have loved to have seen that for myself but I was making supper at the time lol.

However, on the way home from soccer tonight, Darian and I were in the back alley and I thought to myself "wouldn't it be cool to see one of those meteors tonight? the sky is so clear". No sooner did I think that when one suddenly appeared right in front of us. I could not believe my eyes. It was certainly no where near as large and the one from the night before, but still FAR larger than any meteor I have seen in the past. Those always looked cool, but small like our vision of the comets that have been through our skies. This was huge and had a long burning yellowy orange tail. It must have been in the sky 6-8 seconds and then it burned up. Wow that was cool.Darian thought it was cool but scary. A tiny voice said "Mommmmy what is it???".

But again, it made me think about things.. A lot of people are wondering what would have happened if the one from Thurs night had landed in the middle of a city or town, or hit a farm house. Apparently the astronomers are guessing that it was only the size of a fist and broke into smaller pieces - but it was travelling in excess of 200 000 km/hr. Yes, two hundred thousand. Whoa. I wouldn't want to get hit with a punch that strong, so are they trying to downplay what could have happened or what? I will find some video to post here, there are several online.

Anyway some people are also wondering if anyone knew this thing was coming, if it was a bit bigger than other ones usually are, and if they assumed it would break up in the atmosphere like they normally do. Or if they didn't even know this was going to pound through the sky and rattle windows and leave a sonic-boom type sound. We take risks every day just being on the road, crossing the street, etc etc. But at least there is some measure of control over your life with things like that. You can choose when to cross, you can choose which lane to drive in (and it may or may not save your life). But it's a choice. Our own decisions, even the smallest ones, determine our fate each and every day. But what choice do we have against nature? Against the earth itself? Against everything beyond our earth?


I watched The Happening the other week and even though I wasn't thrilled with the movie, the concept was interesting. Of course I have also heard a lot lately about the mysterious disappearance of honey bees across the US, and then there is a quote in the movie about the earth no longer existing 4 years after honey bees disappear... and then of course it is 2008 and the Mayan Calendar shows 2012 as being the last year on it............ 8 plus 4 = 12. Hmm. I don't like it when things make me think lol.

So yeah, there is still an awful lot of stuff out there that we do not understand yet. We cannot understand them and perhaps do not have the capability of measuring, testing, etc some ideas yet. And meanwhile we are sitting ducks for whatever the earth or the universe has to throw at us. It's a bit creepy really.

I was so glad when one of my friends posted on his facebook that he saw a meteor at the exact same time tonight as me and Darian because I thought people would say I was making it up. It's nice to know that others saw it too. Now I'm off to find some video to embed in the next post.

2 comments:

  1. Great story... I often wonder about that too...

    Even something the size of a fist going that fast would go straight through you on its way to the ground. So, you would be just as dead.

    BUT... I can't think like that or else I would always be checking the sky. So I just live.

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  2. For sure! I see so many people just drudging along through life when they should maybe be LIVING it, not just plodding along. If something happened to me tomorrow, I can know that I have done a lot of things in my life that I never thought I would do. Traveling to and living in Europe, having children, being in a great relationship, having a great family (even though we don't see eye to eye on everything lol), and so on. There really isn't much else that I feel I have not accomplished, other than maybe some sort of steady career but I am happy where I am at and I think that is a good thing.

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