Jupiter Takes One for the Team

A few days ago, an amateur in Australia witnessed an amazing --- or terrifying --- sight. A comet the size of the Pacific Ocean hit Jupiter, leaving a gap in the gaseous surface. To the side is a size comparison of Jupiter to Earth. There was an article today in the New York Times about it. There will be a link to it at the bottom of the post.

If that sucker had hit us, we'd've been destroyed. So we should all be unerringly grateful to Jupiter for being so huge and having such an enormous gravitational pull. Countless comets and meteors have hit it, very few actually being seen. It is amazing that the most recent was seen. I find it kind of scary that the spot (storm) on Jupiter that has been there for billions of years is twice the size of earth and has been there for the same amount of time. There could be some kind of alien civilization living there obscured by the gas. Not much is known about the surface of Jupiter because it is almost impossible for a rover to walk across the "surface", unlike Mars (yay for Spirit and Opportunity!).

Anyway, we should all, like, send thank-you cards to them if that were possible or probable. Write one anyway. Who knows, maybe they'll be able to tell you did. But I think that if there were any aliens out there, they probably find us quite trivial. They are surviving in very different circumstances from ours, and . . . I don't know. If you ever meet an Extra Terrestrial, make sure there is an available phone. Come on, didn't any of you watch E.T.?


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/weekinreview/26overbye.html?_r=1&ref=science


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