Comets, Asteroids, and Movies

Presented by Paramount and DreamWorks, the movie Deep Impact came out in 1998. As a connoisseur of disaster movies I believe it to be one of the best disaster movies ever made and yet you don’t hear much about it.

Michael Tolkin wrote a fabulous story with interesting complex characters. The tension starts early on and just keeps escalating until the very end. And (*Spoiler Alert*) the disaster at the end is chilling and heartbreaking. Despite being a twenty-six year old film, the special effects are excellent. I just watched it and it put me into the mindset of an extinction level event, an E.L.E., in ways it probably did not do for me 26 years ago.

The cast is, well, simply the best. Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximillian Schell, James Cromwell, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, and Morgan Freeman to name a few. It’s like a Who’s Who. Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Duvall were absolutely wonderful to observe.

Here’s one of the trailers:

In the movie, the comet (they probably should have called it an asteroid) is said to be the size of Mt. Everest. And thanks to the astronauts on a mission to deflect it, end up breaking into two. Both still on course for to hit our little blue dot, Earth.

But, today this movie can be, eerily, associated to real life because this morning in Forbes:

Two Asteroids Are About To Fly By Earth—One The Size Of Mount Everest

Two asteroids—one very large and one particularly close—will pass close to Earth within 42 hours from Thursday night, according to scientists. Neither will pose any threat, but since one of them was only discovered last week and the other is among the largest ever to pass our planet, they’re a stark reminder of the dangers near-Earth objects pose to the planet.

And guess what, today is also Asteroid Day! “An annual festival that includes live streamed lectures on YouTube that highlight the importance and impact of space on Earth. “

“When at its closest at 4:16 p.m. EDT (20:16 UTC) on June 27, the asteroid 2011 UL21 will be one of the largest to have recently passed near Earth.”

Wow. Right? How crazy is that?

While everyone is all keyed up about a certain political debate happening here shortly, this asteroid is doing an Earth fly-by. It’s enough to make me realize just how special our lives are and the delicate balance of things in the Universe.