I’ve been watching a lot of eerie Twilight Zone episodes for the past few Hallow’s eve days. The episode above (watch episode above because the text below may spoil it) is from Night Gallery which is a 1970′s spin-off version of The Twilight Zone. Starring the same narrator, Rod Serling, who walks around painted pictures that segue into a real story, Mario 64-style. Night Gallery was also spoofed in Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror IV.
We have around 5 billion years to sort ourselves out such as colonize the rest of the galaxy before before our sun dies and destroys this planet. Unless we can turn our planet into a giant propulsion device -
I didn’t find this episode on my own (but I will be posting my favorite Twilight Zone eps in the future). The episode above was posted in a reddit comment on a real news story titled “Asteroid explodes over Indonesia with force of 3 Hiroshima bombs – and no one on Earth knew it was coming.”
The asteroid was around 20 meters across and hit the Earth’s atmosphere at 45,000mph Photo: GETTY IMAGESThe White House is to develop a policy on the space object impact threat by October next year.
On 8 October, the rock crashed into the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The blast was heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario. Scientists are concerned that it was not spotted by any telescopes, and that had it been larger it could have caused a disaster. The asteroid, estimated to have been around 10 metres (30ft) across, hit the atmosphere at an estimated 45,000mph. The sudden deceleration caused it to heat up rapidly and explode with the force of 50,000 tons of TNT. Luckily, due to the height of the explosion – estimated at between 15 and 20 km (nine to 12 miles) above sea level – no damage was caused on the ground. However, if the object had been slightly larger – 20 to 30 metres (60 to 90ft) across – it could easily have caused extensive damage and loss of life, say researchers. Very few objects smaller than 100 meters (300ft) across have been spotted and catalogued by astronomers. Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, warned that it was inevitable that minor asteroids would go unnoticed. He said: “If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes. “A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars.” The fireball was spotted by locals in Indonesia, and a YouTube video taken that day “appears to show a large dust cloud consistent with a bright, daylight fireball”, according to the Ontario researchers. An asteroid or comet fragment around 60 meters across is believed to have been behind the Tunguska Event, a powerful explosion that took place over Russia in 1908. The blast has been estimated at equivalent to 10-15 million tons of TNT – enough to destroy a large city.
What if, unpredictably, an entire country got wiped out by something from the cosmos. Could something like that happen in our lifetime? Really puts into perspective any bad (and good) personal events that happened in the day. No need to sweat the small stuff — it’s all small stuff. I got my 23andme test results back today.
23andme tells you if you have any genetic predispositions for certain diseases or traits (over 100 total). This thing *knows* I’m lactose-intolerant, have Chinese and Japanese descent, and have brown eyes and hair — and it listed all of this after receiving just an ounce of my spit. I’m impressed 
It’s based on population studies that tested DNA of the diseased and those who didn’t have the disease. Lets you know if a gene of yours lines up. I got a read-out of my potential diseases, and I am now relegated to a pre-determined path of self-destruction ascribed in the pages of 23andme. Forced to live everyday of my life like I have the disease. Or perhaps living everyday of my life like it’s the last. That’s a liberating way to think of it. I’m not sure I have the genes to maintain that state of mind, but rather the genes to make a game out of trying to avoid my future maladies. Afterall, I do have the structured, compulsive trait of trying to avoid errors 
After seeing what could get me I am going to take my diet, activity-level, stress-management, and supplementation a bit more seriously. And I will pay more attention to the latest in research and news (by searching the imminst forums) that is specifically geared towards fighting my genes’ expressions 
There’s always more accurate, future genetic tests to get second-opinions on – and 23andme is constantly refining their research and using my archived, raw spit-data to keep me updated. It’s also somewhat freeing to know that I don’t have certain genes that increase my risk of particular diseases (diseases I’ve heard about on the news and on Oprah). But the reality is I’m just an organism in a vast environment– an environment that could trump every struggle I manage to try & pull. What if the stars align and *sherpow* cosmic balances shift… out of my control and I find myself … stepping into the twilight zone. Found the timescape 
vid above today showing what little we truly see from the sky – click HD if you wanna see some star-power. I think I’ve been watching too many Twilight Zone eps – I’ll share more later.
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Update: just saw this Superbowl commercial:
