Puzzle Description:

Somewhere out there...an asteroid large enough and on a collision course with Earth to cause a mass extinction event. Earth in the far background. Asteroid up close.

#1: Gator (Gator) on Sep 14, 2009 [HINT]

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Found to be logically solvable by Gator.

Wonderful.

It sure doesn't look like it's on a collision course with Earth to me. It looks like it missed, and now is millions of miles past it.

Large collision asteroid impacts only occur every so many million years (statistically speaking). So hopefully it's millions of years before this happens again. :)

Yeah I think it missed us....by quite a ways so it would seem.

If it were a comet, it would make sense... their ion tails point toward the sun no matter which way they're going. Do asteroids have tails?

Thanks for your entry!

#7 - I was using the word "asteroid" interchangeably with meteor or comet. They are all basically the same thing, but classified different depending upon composition or what they are doing.

Fun puzzle, Gator. Really challenging, but satisfying to finish.

Adam, I agree, it looks like a miss to me. They talked about this on the program "The Universe" on the History channel last night.

Robyn, I didn't know that about the tail always pointing toward the sun no matter what direction it's going. So interesting.

Teresa, if you'll indulge me with another link to an article I wrote... here are "Nothing but the Facts" about comets:

http://www.brighthub.com/science/space/articles/13608.aspx

A comet has up to 4 different types of clouds and tails around its nucleus. Only one of these, the ion tail, points away from the sun regardless of the comet's path. (I was mistaken--it points away from the sun due to solar wind, not towards it.)

So interesting. Thanks. :-)

I watched the "The Universe" episode online. I had not heard of the "Big Rip" concept before.

nice image... and I learned stuff too. :)

The article was interesting. I was living on a hobby farm in the countryside when Hale-bop last visited. The nearest source of light polution there was the yard light and when one got behind the house or in the shadow of the barn it could be astonishingly dark. I can remember getting up early in the morning and seeing this bright orange star that looked like an upside down ice cream cone. First thought was "What the hell?!" but then I remembered there was supposed to be a comet in the vacinity. A bit of quick internet search confirmed it. It was clearly visable to the naked eye for quite a while.

many people already mentioned the "missing earth" point and i agree
nice image and a fun solve gator

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I thought it was an Apollo capsule that missed.

Great image. Understood what it was without the explanation. Fun solve. I did guess a couple of times.

Don't look up!

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