THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 19, 1994 TAG: 9407190316
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Mark me down as not jumping with glee over the dirty snowballs bombarding the planet Jupiter at a speed of 130,000 miles an hour and blowing holes in it bigger than Wards Corner, the first major shopping center in the South.
``It knocks your socks off!'' cried one young woman astronomer, eyes shining, holding up a photograph and flashing it about at such a great rate that we had to wait, in keen apprehension, for another whole news cycle to see what it was about.
``Young lady,'' I shouted at the TV, ``if one of those scopers hits the Earth, it is going to knock off a great deal more than our socks!''
And then, while she continued to flourish the photograph, I yelled: ``Compose yourself! Hold still enough for us to see what in the name of Isaac Newton that is!''
``Who are you jabbering to out there?'' came a cry from the kitchen.
``All I hope is that if a comet ever comes our way,'' I hollered to the kitchen, ``that they will entrust the announcement of its approach to someone with a cooler head.''
Else the comet will arrive in a rush before anybody has a chance to see what it looks like.
We wouldn't even have time to duck.
Before the first of several mountain-size chunks of a comet thumped Jupiter, scientists were warning us not to get our hopes up, that the impact of the comet might have no effect whatever.
That is the way with scientists, looking for the most sensational phenomenon with no thought whatever to what it is going to do to the neighborhood.
What they should have been rooting for was that the comet might fade away and sink to nothingness in Jupiter's gaseous gut.
It was for that my hopes were up.
Word that we may be spared is the sort at which we should dash dancing in the streets, shouting: ``It missed us! It didn't get here! It faded away! Glory, glory!''
Scientists dismay me. They take the long view, backward and forward. One said that, after all, comets may have brought to Earth the stuff from which life was created.
``Like a fish in a pickle dish!'' I shouted to him, regressing to my own prehistoric childhood.
Another found cheer that the splash of a boulder in Yucatan obliterated dinosaurs and made room for mammals, concluding with us.
``You think that is of any consolation?'' I yelled at the set.
I don't want to make way, even a million years hence, for a superior race.
I want my kind and this good Earth to be around forever and ever amen.
Another thing, the comet isn't sporting. Used to be, anybody who wrapped a snowball around a rock wouldn't be allowed to play.
Instead of running around rejoicing we should be collecting coat hangers and weaving them into a great net to catch the comet and hurl it back.
If you've got a better idea, I'd like to hear it. by CNB