Are You Still Here?

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.

 On February 15^th, assuming you're reading this, an asteroid came close to the Earth without hitting it. In the past several years astronomers have been keeping track of asteroids that come close to the Earth. And 2012 DA14 will come closer to the Earth than any of the others they have tracked before. Just a little over 17,000 miles. That means it will be coming within the orbit of geosynchronous communication satellites.

Old News

 A few weeks back I wrote about Carbon 14 and how it was used to determine how old organic material is. Carbon 14 is created in the atmosphere by radioactive activity from space and is absorbed by living creatures. So astronomical activity is used by archaeologists to date things on Earth. Well now things might be working the other way around.