To the Editor,
I showed up for the tree planting in Caledonia for Earth Day on the Grand River. Very well attended, and the organization running the event was excellent. Partway through the planting, I spotted a lady in a long black coat with a white scarf with ordinary shoes on in a muddy area. She was helped to walk from the field with staff holding her arm. It was Marie Trainer showing up to “support” the community, for a photo with a shovel. Politicians should show the way to serve the people. A disgrace to the Conservatives.
Jerome Clark, Hagersville
To the Editor,
A few weeks ago, Haldimand County was treated to a rare celestial event, the total
solar eclipse of April 8. From my viewing location out at Hickory Beach near Nanticoke, the sky had a few thin cirrus clouds which didn’t marr the sight of the sun’s corona too much, but it did hamper the viewing of most of what else was on display. All the other planets of the solar system were above the horizon at the time, but only bright Venus could occasionally be glimpsed. No matter really, the stars of the show were the sun and moon. After munching on ‘eclipse cookies’ (you can probably guess the actual brand), my thoughts turned to the question: “I wonder how many people will ponder ‘what else is out there?’”
Depending on your age, people will remember from school that our solar system has nine planets (now eight, after Pluto was demoted in 2006). Some may remember that
there are other things called comets and asteroids, the latter of which circle the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Not all of them do. My hobby for the last four-plus years has been to study the asteroids that get close to Earth.
If you think of the planets as the cookies in the solar system cookie jar, the asteroids are the crumbs. Numerous, a wide variety of sizes, and they get absolutely everywhere.The first asteroid was discovered in 1801. It has been given the name 1 Ceres. Slowly over time, more have been found. By 1990, around 20,000 had been catalogued.
With the advent of dedicated satellites and automated ground-based telescopes, the number has grown to over 1.35 million as I write this. Less than half have well-determined orbits. A catalogue of them, which is updated every day, can be found at the website of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona. They are finding over 100,000 new asteroids every year! Most of these are too far away and too small to be of particular interest, but around 14,000 of them, at some point in their orbit, can swing by the orbit of Earth.
On the front page of the November 24, 2022 edition of The Haldimand Press, there is a photo of what happens when one of these gets too close. The newly discovered asteroid, labeled 2022 WJ1, entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up over Brantford the Saturday before. (Sidebar: the late RUSH drummer Neil Peart, born in 1952, who lived in Oneida Twp and Hagersville until his family moved to St. Catharines in 1954, has an asteroid named after him. It is designated 23469 Neilpeart. It was given the label 1990 SY3 when it was first found).
2022 WJ1 was a small crumb. Probably around a metre across. It easily burned up. In the past, Earth hasn’t been so lucky. In February 2013, an asteroid about 18 metres across entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia, and exploded, the shock wave breaking windows and injuring over 1,400 people, mostly from flying glass. In June 1908, an asteroid (or small comet) crashed to Earth in another region of Siberia, flattening 2,000 square kilometres of forest. The object was probably about 65 metres across. And of course, about 65 million years ago, an asteroid ~10km across hit Earth and disrupted the climate so much that 75% of life forms (including the dinosaurs) became extinct. These are called Extiction Level Events, or ELEs (pronounced Ellys).
Of the 14,000 near earth asteroids (NEAs) known now, about 2,000 fall into a subclass called potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). So far, none of these are expected to hit the Earth in the next 100 years.
But if one of these, or a newly found one, were projected to hit and cause an ELE, say, six months from now, would you REALLY want to know beforehand?
Karl Wilk, Hagersville
