Happy Asteroid Day 2016

Every year, on December 25th, I wish you a Happy Asteroid Day. The reason I do this is because on this date, in the year 3476 AD, an asteroid was supposed to slam into the planet Deucado and kill everyone there. Rome and Rei interceded in the middle part of the novel Rome's Revolution and turned things around. After establishing a cease fire and preventing a war, they sent up an army of VIRUS unit-laden livetars who flew out and destroyed the asteroid thus saving the planet.

Here is my standard greeting:



Image my surprise when I found out that Asteroid Day is a real thing. The actual date is June 30th and this is not arbitrary. According to Wikipedia, June 30, 1908 was the date of the Siberian Tunguska event, the most harmful known asteroid-related event on Earth in recent history. According to the Asteroid Day group's web site, the four official co-founders of Asteroid Day are: Dr Brian May, Danica Remy, Grigorij Richters and Rusty Schweickart, the former astronaut.

The date may be different and the planet may be different but the cause is the same: raising awareness of the dangers that large asteroids pose for inhabited planets. The Asteroid Day group is more concerned with asteroids hitting Earth. I guess when you think about it, it is probably more important for the next few hundred years that attention is focused here rather than around a fictional planet in the Tau Ceti system, roughly 12 light years from Earth.

So if you get a chance, check out the group's web site and see if you get behind their charter. After all, remember the dinosaurs. A big asteroid would be far more fatal to our species than war, disease, climate change or any other disaster you can imagine.