An 885-foot-long asteroid will speed by the Earth tonight at 27,000 miles per hour, but what's the tie-in with the Winter Olympics? Well, it was "almost exactly" a year ago when another chunk of space rock actually exploded in the sky over Russia—and that's where Sochi is, in Russia!
Also, some gold medal winners in Sochi were given bits of the Chelyabinsk Meteor that blew up over Russia on February 15, 2013. A gold medal is a nice thing and all, but it hardly compares to owning a bit of the space rock that injured 1,500 Russians. So, there's the Olympics angle.
Unless it veers off course and destroys the planet, the asteroid known as "2000 EM6" is expected to harmlessly zoom past the Earth. But we might as well call it the "Sochi Asteroid." That way, if it happens to smash into Earth and there are some survivors, the cataclysmic event will have a more topical name than "2000 EM6."
At 9 p.m. Eastern tonight, the huge asteroid will come within 2 million miles of Earth, our only home. You can watch this happen, live on the Internet, because we now possess the technology to watch our own destruction, in real time.
There's no reason to expect the asteroid to hit anywhere near Russia, if it does veer off course and explode over the Earth. But if by terrible coincidence this "2000 EM6" should detonate over Sochi, the very finest young specimens of the human species will all be tragically killed. Nothing but halfwits and ogres will remain.
If this is the end for our species, rest assured that some monstrous creatures will likely evolve to take over our duties of looking at our phones and ordering pizza and watching the Olympics.
[Image by Jim Cooke.]