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

"What is it?" Dr. Watson's voice asked over the phone, but Chapman didn't respond.

"Shit!" Dr. Watson heard someone on Chapman's end of the phone yell, offering confirmation of his worst fears.

"Have you verified this with anyone else?!" Chapman asked Watson hurriedly. "What about with the Hubble?!"

"Stay on the line," Watson said. "We'll do that right now." It really wasn't necessary: Kitt Peak was well-equipped to verify what was happening, but for about forty-five seconds Chapman held the phone as he listened to the ensuing hysteria that erupted when Watson passed along the content of the call to the others at Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. Then he hung up and sat back down, not waiting for Watson to return to the phone. Behind him reporters, now ignoring the boundaries meant to keep them out of the way of the astronomers, demanded to know what was happening. The other two astronomers quickly called other observatories, hoping to find something that would tell them they were wrong, but there was no mistake. It took only a few moments to be sure. Asteroid 2021 KD had inexplicably changed course and was now headed dangerously close to a collision course with the earth. It was impossible to determine where, or even if it would hit; there was no time to run simulations now. The asteroid was now only 8,640 miles away and would reach the earth's outer atmosphere in less than eight minutes.

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Chapter 5

Alien Stone

At 7:33:22 am. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), July 3, 2021, 317 miles above the earth's surface and directly over the northern Siberian village of Tiksi near the Lena Delta, asteroid 2021 KD, traveling at a speed of 18 miles per second (64,440 miles per hour), entered the most extent region of the earth's ionosphere. Its angle of descent was so slight that it traveled over seven miles horizontally to the earth's surface for every one mile it dropped. At that angle, the density of the atmosphere increased relatively slowly, with the result that the asteroid's surface temperature rose only about a dozen degrees Celsius with each passing second. The slow but steady increase in resistance of the denser atmosphere against the asteroid's irregular shape, combined with its unusual axis of rotation, caused the asteroid to begin to tumble and spin.

Eighty-one seconds after entering the ionosphere, at an altitude of 108 miles, the friction of the atmosphere caused the skin of the tumbling asteroid to superheat and glow. Sixteen seconds later it penetrated the outer regions of the stratosphere, 60 miles above the earth's surface. Nearly coincident to this, the asteroid's surface temperature reached 1,527 degrees Celsius, the melting point of the nickel-iron alloy which made up the great majority of its now wildly

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tumbling mass. As it did, millions of tiny droplets, or ablation flakes, of molten metal began to peel away from the twelve-mile wide colossus, leaving a visible metallic trail of red-hot nickel iron and combining with the friction of the asteroid to superheat the atmosphere around it.

Had it been a more spherical object, the asteroid would have maintained the same trajectory it had when it entered the atmosphere. That course would have brought it to within 29 miles of the earth's surface over northern Canada Ч never actually coming in contact with the earth, but continuing on after a six and a half minute sojourn, back into space. Such had been the case in August 1972 when a large meteoroid passed through the atmosphere over the western United States and Canada. What made this incident different was the asteroid's irregular shape. As the asteroid encountered denser and denser air, two forces worked increasingly against each other: inertia and drag. Just as the design of an airplane wing gives the airplane lift, so the shape and tumbling of the asteroid combined to impel it in the opposite direction, that is, to force it down toward the earth. At this point, inertia was winning. But drag had already forced the asteroid several miles lower and with each mile the air grew thicker and the drag grew greater.

It would be erroneous to say that the asteroid was falling; the earth's gravity played almost no part in the asteroid's course. Its speed when it entered the atmosphere was more than two and a half times the velocity needed to escape the earth's gravity, and thus far, that speed had decayed by only a relatively insignificant .6 miles per second. Other factors, however, did come into play to affect the asteroid's course relative to the earth's surface. These included the continuing orbit of the earth around the sun; the curvature of the earth; and to a small extent, even the earth's rotation, at the comparatively slow speed of about 1,000 miles per hour. Combined, the effect was that the path of the asteroid arched like a pitcher's curve ball, carrying it slightly to the east in its predominantly southern course, as it moved ever closer to the earth's surface.

Seconds later, above the Beaufort Sea, north of Mackenzie Bay in Canada's Northwest Territory, the asteroid reached a critical point in its approach. Because of atmospheric physics, a sonic

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boom generated at heights above 37 miles reflects upward off of the denser atmosphere below, thereby preventing any sound from reaching ground level. Now, however, 111 seconds after entering the atmosphere, as the asteroid dropped to less than 37 miles, a sonic boom as powerful as the strongest earthquake issued forth through the heat-blistered sky.

Below the asteroid, near Key Point, south of Herschel Island, the men of a half-dozen Inuit Eskimo families waited patiently in their boats, some with hand-held harpoons, others with high-powered rifles, scanning the bay for the dingy gray-white backs of Beluga whales to break the surface. It was 11:35 p.m. local time, but that hardly mattered this far north and at this time of year in the 'land of the midnight sun.' The last sunrise had been on June twenty-first, twelve days before, and the next sunset would not come for another fifteen days, on July eighteenth. On the shore a few hundred yards away, the men's families slept in tents, waiting for the next kill when they would strip the muktuk and despoil the white whale of every usable part. Suddenly, all eyes turned toward the sky and stared in awe at heaven's display. In mere seconds it was gone, trailing off into the southern sky.

For a moment after the asteroid passed, the men stood frozen in silence. And then all at once they shouted to each other in their native Inuklitut with such great excitement that, for the moment, they totally ignored the pair of Beluga whales that had surfaced just 20 meters away. Then someone pointed and called out. Quickly the men in the boats nearest the whales put the asteroid out of their minds and went to work, starting their small outboard motors and maneuvering their 18-foot crafts as close to the unsuspecting Beluga as possible. Near the bow of each boat, two men stood ready, one poised with a hand-held harpoon connected by rope to a pair of empty aluminum beer kegs, the other with a rifle, hoping to finish the job quickly after the harpoon was set.

Traveling at 1,100 feet per second, it would be nearly three full minutes before the asteroid's sonic boom reached the boats below. When it did it would hit like a brick wall, shattering the fiberglass hulls as if they were cheap stage glass, and splintering the bones of the men and their families like balsa, reducing their lifeless bodies to formless heaps.

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Behind the asteroid a tremendous vacuum formed, which the surrounding atmosphere rushed to fill, creating a tail of supersaturated air from above the Arctic Ocean and a wake of wind which curled off, forming row upon row of super cyclones like giant eddies behind the paddle of a boat.

To the residents of Kaktovik, Alaska, 125 miles to the west, the asteroid appeared in the sky as an enormous flaming star. (It would be eight and a half minutes before the first winds reached them. Less than two minutes later, no one would be left alive as the entire town was blown into the arctic sea.) To the ill-fated Inuit Eskimos near Kay Point, directly beneath the asteroid, it had seemed as though the midnight sun had exploded. Twelve seconds later, to the people of Fort McPherson, 200 miles farther south, at which point the asteroid streaked by only 26 miles overhead, it was as if the heavens themselves were on fire.

No one at Ft. McPherson understood what was happening. The news of the change in the asteroid's course was only now being broadcast on television and radio and, without time to run computer simulations, no one could even begin to project the asteroid's course or where, when, or if, it would actually collide with the earth. In Ft. McPherson, parents pointed and young children clapped in delight as if viewing fireworks. Nearly everyone, young and old alike, was up despite the late hour to watch the asteroid. They had been told to expect no more than a bright light, like a huge star, traveling swiftly across the sky. What they saw instead was a flaming tumbling mountain the size of Manhattan Island hurling past them at unbelievable speed, followed by a fiery trail as bright as morning itself. It was an awesome sight that no one really had time to take in. Four seconds later, with the asteroid already 66 miles farther south but still clearly in view because of its enormous size, the people of Fort McPherson still stared in wonder as they were engulfed from behind in a nuclear-force wall of heat.

There was no chance to escape, but at least the pain did not last. Everyone and everything for 15 miles to the east and west were incinerated and turned to ash within seconds. What didn't bum, melted, and all was swept away in the asteroid's tremendous wake, leaving no trace on the suddenly-barren landscape of the homes, schools, or lives of the 720 stalwart souls who had lived there.