"02 - Birth of an Age" - читать интересную книгу автора (BeauSeigneur James)

Waters pressed a key to restart the simulation. The third and largest of the asteroids had been just beyond the scope of the close-up and so had momentarily disappeared from the screen, but now reemerged just to the upper left of the screen. The vision was quite arresting and Dr. Waters could clearly hear the collective gasp as the simulation played through. "A collision?" Xiou asked, struggling to maintain his professionalism despite the scene unfolding before him. It was not necessary for Dr. Waters to respond; in another moment, an instant after the counter changed to August fifteenth, the asteroid struck the earth. In the simulation the earth, with a diameter of about 8,000 miles, merely absorbed the much smaller body and continued about its orbit. Although that might accurately represent the view from space, the view from the earth would be much more dramatic.

"At this point the simulation is based on a limited amount of data," Waters said. "It's still possible that my calculations could be wrong. We're going to get some additional shots of the asteroids tonight and try to tie this thing down, but it appears we're looking at the possibility of a direct hit on the earth."

There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and then Dr. Xiou asked, "How much damage are we talking about?"

"From a combination of primary and secondary effects," Dr. Waters answered, "the destruction of all, or nearly all, life on the planet."

Chapter 3

When Worlds Collide

June 23,2021 Ч United Nations Security Council

Ambassador Jeremiah Ngordon of Chad, who represented Western Africa and whose turn in the rotation it was to serve as President of the Security Council, called the special meeting to order. The meeting had been requested by Dr. Samuel Johnson of the United Nations Space Science Foundation and Ambassador Hella Winkler of Germany, who had replaced Christopher as the Alternate from Europe when he was elected as Europe's Primary. Winkler had also replaced Christopher as Chairman of the World Peace Organization (WPO), and it was in that capacity that she now joined Dr. Johnson in requesting the meeting.

By now everyone allowed into this closed meeting was aware of its purpose. Nevertheless, following the requisite introductions of guests and obligatory statements of mutual admiration which always precede meetings where politicians are involved, the meeting began with a summary of the events which had precipitated it. Among the contingent of eight scientists and three WPO generals on hand to brief and answer questions from the Security Council were Dr. James Waters of Mount Wilson Observatory and Dr. Jung Xiou of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Mary

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Ludford, who had discovered the asteroids, was also present, but it was not anticipated that she would address the council.

The meeting was closed to the press and public but there was no intent to keep the information secret for long. The only thing worse than letting the truth out would be having it leak out. But it was important that the information be presented to the public in the calmest possible terms and tones. Certainly the peril was real, but the crisis was not without a remedy: the sole purpose of this meeting was to assure that the cure would have a chance to work. Science believed it had found the solution and now government would provide the needed finances and logistical support.

Decker Hawthorne, whose office was the gatekeeper for information from the meeting, had hand-picked the staff, including those who would handle the audio and video recording of the proceedings. Selected portions of the tapes would be released to the press, but only after judicious editing. Now that the meeting was underway, Decker sat, pen poised over a legal pad, ready to note any statements that might need to be edited out to avoid unjustified anxiety among the public. There was no evidence of distress in his manner, but Decker was keenly aware that there was far more to this matter than anyone in this room, other than he and Christopher, could begin to understand. No one had yet made any connection between the asteroids and what the men, John and Cohen, had prophesied five months earlier. But, then why should they? Most of the people in this room didn't even know who John and Cohen were; those who did assumed they were just garden-variety kooks. Still, by this time no one could have avoided at least hearing stories of their peculiar followers, the Koum Damah Tatare. Every country in the world had a few; most had hundreds.

Dr. Alsie Johnson of the U.N. Space Science Foundation made a few opening statements, introduced the guests, and then passed the microphone over to Dr. Waters, who provided a basic explanation of the threat and then narrated a slightly updated version of the simulation he had shown to Dr. Xiou and Mary Ludford two days earlier. Since then, refinements of the calculations of the asteroids' paths found that the first and second asteroids, 2021 KD and 2021 KE, would pass on opposite sides of the earth. The first and larger of the two asteroids would pass approximately 4,000 miles from the earth, traveling from northwest

When Worlds Collide 39

to southeast over much of North and South America on the night of July third. The second asteroid would pass three hours later, at approximately 1,000 miles, on the daylight side of the planet, also traveling from northwest to southeast, crossing much of northwest and southeast Asia, the Philippines and New Guinea.

By far the best view would be available from the Americas. There the first asteroid would be visible for several hours as it passed rapidly across the night sky. On the other side of the world, the asteroid would be somewhat harder to spot as it passed through the sunlit sky, not as a sparkling light but as a gray spot Ч much like the moon in daylight Ч easily escaping the attention of anyone not looking for it. The hope of witnessing a skip off the earth's atmosphere had been unhappily abandoned.

The real threat was the third asteroid, 2021 KF, which was by far the largest with a diameter of 50 kilometers, or about 30 miles. As indicated by Dr. Waters' initial calculations, 2021 KF was headed directly for the earth and would arrive, if nothing was done to stop it, on August fifteenth, forty-three days after the first two asteroids had safely passed. The human race, however, would not go without a fight. Modern science stood ready to prevent the cataclysm using, ironically, the same tools which before now had themselves threatened to destroy life on the planet.

Dr. Terri Hall, a former student of famed astronomer Eleanor Helin, and now one of the foremost experts on asteroids, took over when Dr. Waters completed his portion of the briefing. "There are literally millions of asteroids in our solar system," she began, "approximately one million of which are one kilometer or more in diameter. The largest asteroid, Ceres is 1,033 kilometers (about 620 miles) in diameter. Most asteroids are in orbits between Mars and Jupiter. In addition, there are several tens of thousands of asteroids which fall into three other groups: {heAtens. whose orbits range from just beyond the Earth to just beyond Mars; {heApolIos, whose orbits actually cross the orbit of Earth; and {he Amors, whose orbits range between the orbits of Earth and Venus.

"From time to time, either in the course of their normal orbits or as the result of interference from the gravity of another body or a collision between asteroids, an asteroid will come into an intersecting orbit with the Earth. However, this is a very infrequent occurrence. Over the past billion years, perhaps 400 or so asteroids

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When Worlds Collide 41

larger than a quarter of a mile in diameter are believed to have collided with the earth. That equates to an average of one every two and a half million years. Because about three quarters of the earth's surface is covered with water, this number can only be estimated, based on the number of known asteroid craters on land and on the limited evidence we have of asteroids that have fallen into the oceans. The earth has approximately forty-five craters known to have been created by asteroid impact. They range in size from about 7'/2 kilometers to 140 kilometers, that is, about 85 miles. The largest and oldest craters are Vredefort in South Africa and the Sudbury crater in Ontario. Both are approximately 85 miles in diameter and were formed by asteroids measuring about 10 kilometers, or 6 miles, in diameter. The crater in Vredefort is 1.97 billion years old; the crater in Ontario was formed approximately 1.84 billion years ago. Other smaller craters, more than one billion years old, are believed to have disappeared with erosion.

"Probably the best known asteroid collision took place 65 million years ago when an asteroid of about 10 kilometers in diameter impacted off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula near Chicxulub, Mexico. That collision is credited with the extinction of the dinosaurs. More recently Ч about two and a half million years ago Ч an asteroid of approximately 600 meters, or a third of a mile in diameter, struck in the South Pacific Ocean west of the southernmost tip of South America. The force of that impact is conservatively estimated to have been 25,000 megatons, that is, about two and a half times the destructive force of the world's combined nuclear forces Ч without the radiation, of course.