As a person with officially-confirmed-by-Myers-Briggs introvert tendencies, it is always a delight to me when someone new enters the neighborhood, waves hello, and keeps on going.

Especially when the visitor is an asteroid.

2010 TD54 zipped by early Tuesday morning on its way to who knows where? Watchers of extra terrestrial rocks say this one wasn’t big enough to cause damage, even if it had entered Earth’s atmosphere. But the latest thinking about the asteroid threat suggests that these smaller rocks are worthy of our attention; not for a potentially planet killing impact, but rather for the possibility that they might merely penetrate the atmosphere just far enough to cause an aerial explosion, or “airburst”, that could create tree flattening winds and rock melting temperatures.

That would be enough to get my attention.

The experts say this is what happened at Tunguska in Siberia in 1908 with an airburst that devastated an area of about 830 square miles. Hennepin and Ramsey counties together cover 776 square miles, so it’s important to think about asteroids, both big and small. We can learn about the origins of the universe from them, mine them for precious metals and maybe even change their paths to avoid future collisions. In fact, President Obama signed a space bill earlier this week that sets us on course to land astronauts on an asteroid by 2025, under the theory that the best defense is a good offense. Let’s get in the face of Tiny Asteroid before he gets in ours!

Word about 2010 TD54 only surfaced on October 9th. One scientist was quoted by space.com as saying smaller, locally destructive asteroids are more numerous and harder to detect than the big ones, and even if we spotted a reckless intruder two weeks before impact, we’d just have to “take the hit”. Ow!

I wonder how much we would know about where an asteroid would enter the atmosphere and whose terrain might get cooked. Suppose you had a week to get out of the way …

Where would you go?

Today is the day of the Autumnal Equinox, one of two points in Earth’s year-long trip around the sun when the planet’s and the star’s middles line up and we have equal daytime and nighttime hours.

The official moment is 10:09 central time this evening.

I like the equinox because it is one of the few calendar events that can be said to provide roughly the same experience everywhere on the planet.

What happens in the weeks before and after the equinox is vastly different, depending where you are. In the Southern Hemisphere, this day is a signal that summer is coming. In fact, some say we should call the two equinoxes “March” and “September” or “Northward” and “Southward”, because the terms we’ve been using are North Hemisphere-centric.

That’s undeniably true, but I do like the standard names because they make our Equinoxes seem like twins – related, but very different. One is hopeful, the other, dark.
So I’ve written them a little sing-song poem.

A pox, Autumnal Equinox!
A pox on your arrival.
To see the sun sink, southward bound
Bodes ill for our survival.

We’ll watch our day shrink to a blink
Its golden globe, a kernel.
Then wait through months of dark to greet
Your warmer brother Vernal.

Are you like or unlike your siblings?

Here’s something for suburbanites to put in that empty third garage stall – a Space Shuttle.

With NASA retiring the orbiters soon, there is competition among museums to see who will receive one of the three remaining spacecraft. The good news? They’re free! The bad news? You have to pay for delivery.

This reminds me of the time when I was in fifth grade and I wrote to NASA to ask for a left over space suit. I was certain they didn’t re-use them. What adult would want to wear someone else’s yucky old astronaut costume, anyway? So why not take one out of the hamper and pop it in the mail? I could walk around inside it and impress my friends, and I figured the on-board air supply would come in handy in case Jennifer Brodie smiled at me again. The first time she did that, I found it impossible to breathe.

The Wall Street Journal article about museums vying to be the home of one of these space “thrifties” quotes an aerospace engineer and shuttle expert named Dennis Jenkins. He has written a history of the shuttle program and he explained why NASA requires candidates to have an indoor space ready for display of a vehicle. “They leak like a sieve,” he says. Apparently the icy vacuum of space and fiery re-entry are not an issue, but rain is another matter.

I guess the space shuttle is no Supercar. Dang!

Watching this excerpt led to another realization about the space program. In the early days we sent monkeys and the Russians sent dogs, but did anyone ever think to launch puppets?

And speaking of public transportation, the Metropolitan council has posted a video game-like clip of the soon-to-be-built Central Corridor light rail line in action. I admit that I have a thing for trains, but I had no idea until I watched this sequence that the new line will float on a cloud of computer generated music.

What’s the coolest vehicle ever to take you from point A to point B?

Since I am open to any new idea that could lead to gainful employment, my attention was caught by an online article from CNBC about a relatively new business that predicts the performance of big box retailers by analyzing on satellite photos of their parking lots.

Yes, people look at parking lots from space. This is good news for me, since my “skill set” includes basic counting and the ability to recognize cars from overhead.

It’s not the planet finder job I was hoping for, but if I could break into this just-getting-off-the-ground profession, I’d be working with extra terrestrial equipment! And what better use is there for our off-planet photographic capabilities? We’ve already seen enough depressing images of melting glaciers and toppled forests.

Let’s find out who’s shopping at Wal-Mart!

According to Eamon Javers’ CNBC report, today is an important day for this new technique, as the second quarter profits are going to be announced and the satellite analysts have parted company with some of the other experts regarding Wal-Mart’s performance. Conventional methods say Wal-Mart will be down from the second quarter one year ago. The parking lot surveillance data from Remote Sensing Metrics says Wal-Mart will be up a bit, based on a surge of cars in June. If the space camera is vindicated, you can expect more off-planet surveillance and new ways to analyze the data. We could look at parking lot trash patterns, vehicle slot alignment trends, handicapped spot pilfering rates and trunk loading vs. back seat stuffing matrices.

I would be interested in working out a Cart Corral Correlation.

By counting the carts inside the cart corral and comparing that to the carts cast aside at curbside, could we concoct some conclusions concerning community spirit as it correlates with carelessness around cars? I bet we could!

Give me a magnifying glass, and I’ll get to work!

Do you always return your shopping cart to the corral, or are you an abandoner?
Tell the truth!