Asteroids, Comets, Meteors, and Music

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It’s not just Friday’s double-header of scary streaking objects. Humans have always had a fascination with dramatic events in the sky. Like us, our ancestors’ most emotionally moving experiences got documented in their art. We don’t know about the lyrical content of their music; they even didn’t have vinyl to leave us. There are cave drawings and paintings of stellar phenomena, some probably “I-was-there-and-you-were-not” bragging rights expressions, some “If-you-kids-don’t-go-to-sleep, this’ll-happen-to-you” scary bedtime stories. After all, they lived through times when if scary things were not heeded, virgins got thrown in volcanoes. For them, there was no science to explain things, so everything unusual was emotionally, and often culturally, disconcerting. At our ancestors’ best, there is the ancient Greek tale of Icarus and his wax wings melting when he flew too close to the sun.
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For us, there’s the ongoing paleontological mystery of whether an asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Mexico, took out the dinosaurs (a species far more successful than the short presence of humans). For our great-grandparents, there was a widespread cultural phenomenon that accompanied Halley’s Comet in 1910, an early reconciliation of science and society. Now there are the annual treks to the deserts and mountains to watch the Leonid and Perseid Meteor Showers, and that’s still a great make-out scene.
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But there are alarming possibilities. In 1992, a flaming meteor was captured on video as it lit-up a night football game in Pennsylvania, and the part that didn’t burn-up – the meteorite – smashed the right-rear quarter panel of a parked car. In 2008, a videographer shot a brilliant fireball of a meteor over Alberta, in Western Canada. Video from airplane windows, and parallel steaks across the sky from campsites and car windows and backyard barbecues are all over YouTube.
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A TALE OF TWO FIRES OVER SIBERIA
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Friday brought the cosmic coincidence of a too-close-for-comfort asteroid barely missing Earth, at the same time that a large meteor exploded over sparsely-populated Siberia. It’s enough to knock the mindless infatuations of our excuse-for-news-coverage off the cyber front pages. For a whole day, you needed to dig to know which celebrity knocked-up which other celebrity, and who-wore-what on what red carpet, and which dysfunctional pop tart is in rehab. And it didn’t require an explosion over, or rogue cop manhunt in, L.A. or New York. “It” was a fireball over a remote part of Russia, meaning this really IS something.
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A hundred and five years ago in Siberia – in Tunguska in 1908 – a massive meteor (or maybe a comet) exploded, leveling 2,000 square miles of forest, killing everything there. In the final decade of the Soviet Union and nuclear weapons brinksmanship with the West, some scientists were warning that a similar event would trigger a nuclear war if it happened over Canada, Europe, China, the US or the USSR. Geopolitics are presumably less volatile in terms of the magnitude of an accidental exchange caused by misinterpreting a cosmic event, but there are North Korean nuclear missiles aimed at US military bases in Japan and South Korea, and India and Pakistan have them aimed at each other, and Israel has nuclear missiles, and Iran soon may.
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A meteor can come from anywhere, and explode over any country. Plenty of junk was left over when the solar system and the Earth formed 4.567 billion years ago – and we know that age (within about a million years) based on finding a few of those leftover fragments. Even after all this time, there’s plenty of loose stuff still making its way around the sun in huge ellipses, playing planetary roulette. After all, the Chicxulub asteroid impact – the one that likely took out the dinosaurs – happened only 65 million years ago, or a good 4.502 billion years after things got organized in our neighborhood.
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IF THAT DON’T GETCHA, SUMP’IN ELSE WILL
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Stray stellar objects continue to be vacuumed-up by Earth’s gravity without regard to whose nation is beneath their path to atmospheric (or surface contact) hari-kari.
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In 2029, an asteroid called Apophis will have a close encounter with Earth, and if it passes-through a gravitational “keyhole” as it goes by, it will come back around and hit us in 2036. If that happens, it could take-out an entire region including a major city, plus throw so much debris into the atmosphere that everything would be changed.
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A rather weird piece, “Asteroid Apophis 2013,” with accompanying images of distant jet plane contrails, was composed and performed by Canadian DIDIER MANCHIONE (www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyJ55UIa4YQ). Another video, “NASA Knows Apophis Will Hit Earth,” has fine NASA animation and pidgin English titles, with a classical string orchestra supplying the soundtrack (www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqxvNgGMLcc).
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When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, odds were placed at 1 in 37 it would hit us. Now, additional observations have given us far better odds of escaping unscathed. But, as an old song goes, “if that don’t getcha, sump'in else / (another one) / will.” Astronomy Professor MICHIO KAKU discusses the idea that some Russian scientists think the thing WILL hit us, what would happen if it really did, in a 2011 “Mox News” piece (www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NyG4q4HK08); worth hanging around to the end just to see the hilarious spoof tag added on by whomever posted it.
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What artist, once they understand all these celestial mechanics, can resist commenting through the perspective of their art? After Friday’s sudden emphasis by the media of the asteroid crossing the front porch while the meteor banged on the door, we are anxious to see.
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WILL YOU TUBE DRIVE INTEREST?
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Today’s explosion of a 10-ton meteor over Russia was witnessed by many people, some of whom had close encounters of the third kind with things hurled at them by the forces unleashed, and all of whom, fortunately, lived to tell of it. Many of those who experienced the reach-out-and-touch experience have shared amateur video. That’s gold, the most-sought commodity in today’s pop-culture. Crazy thing? In Russia, your car insurance won't pay-off unless you can prove who caused an accident. Hence, Russians all have video cameras mounted in their cars, and turned on, recording, all the time. No place else on Earth would have given us so many videos of the meteor, from so many perspectives. A nice compilation, with car radios playing as sequences were filmed, and showing how the incident’s bright light cast deep shadows, is on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Omh7_I8vI).
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Without YouTube, would anyone bother to get in touch with what happened? They’d probably be too distracted by whatever WAS on YouTube, instead: stupid human tricks, most likely. But, since the image parade DOES include flashing fireballs…
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Science can tell us the explosion of the meteor early Friday occurred at more than 32,000 feet above the ground, and it was traveling more than 23,000 miles an hour. It blew-up because it superheated in the atmosphere, and produced a powerful sonic boom and shock wave over Russia's Chelyabinsk region.
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YouTube shows us the explosion's shock wave in the form of bandaged and bleeding people, piles of shattered glass, imploded walls and windows, glass blown out of TV sets, and hurled assorted broken and loose objects that cumulatively injured nearly a thousand people. YouTube even confirmed the explosion caused a factory roof to collapse (www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ2XXa5oFhw).
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“Streaking meteor explodes in Russian sky, injuring nearly 1,000,” is one of many mainstream media reports – with those vital amateur video links included (http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/16969092-streaking-meteor-explodes-in-russian-sky-injuring-nearly-1000?lite).
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Russian media had professional coverage titled “Apocalypse Now” that’s gone to YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=36MEsWC1Pzc&NR=1).
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Also on mainstream media, BILL NYE “The Science Guy” spoke to the CNN audience in the kind of dramatic terms that are rarely heard from scientists. He declared we need to understand that science has the ability to find threatening objects in space like Friday’s meteor and Friday’s asteroid – things that could hit us – and science can determine their courses before they get here. But Nye’s central message is, no one is currently paying for what it would cost to systematically look for all these things.
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If anything – because we do a little bit of looking – we may be deluding ourselves with a false sense of security. BRIAN MARSDEN operates the “Minor Planet Center,” and NASA is good at finding things that could shatter a planet the size of ours. But objects that could impact Earth and fling debris clouds big enough to obscure our atmosphere with dust and cause crop failures resulting in mass starvation? Well, uh, we aren’t looking for things like that, even though we could probably divert them IF we saw them coming in time.
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If that is ever going to resonate with the distracted masses (before it’s too late), it should be because we get smacked by one small thing on the same day that a much bigger thing, asteroid 2012 DA14, is barely missing us. Indeed, people should realize that it wasn’t NASA or any other governments’ space agency, but a nonprofit organization, the Planetary Society, that found 2012 DA14. That asteroid is making such a close approach to Earth today that it will pass between us and our manmade constellations of communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit. And it is much larger than the meteor over Russia. It’s worth noting that the Planetary Society, founded by the late astronomer CARL SAGAN and currently headed by Nye, derives its comparatively limited research capabilities from its members and supporters. So no one really has responsibility for watching Earth’s back.
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Even if something like 2012 DA 14 hit the Moon, that impact could rain debris on us. The only way to be safe from objects like that is to actively look for and find them in time to change their course.
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Friday’s meteor, the destruction and injuries it caused aside, may have been a good thing. We were not inclined to pay enough attention, otherwise. (And it’s no safe bet that we will, anyway.) Part of the problem is, there’s nothing sexy in the asteroid’s name. If anyone has written a song and used “2012 DA14” in it without that sounding silly and awkward, we’d be surprised. But the day’s double-whammy could get people’s attention.
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MUSIC AND CELESTIAL BODIES…
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Music has often seized on popular fascination with stellar objects – FRANK SINATRA singing “Fly Me to the Moon”; FRANKIE AVALON’s, and then SHOCKING BLUE’s #1 hit, “Venus”; ROBERT MORGAN FISHER’s song “Don’t You Wanna Go to Mars?” (that just won the “Best Folk / Acoustic” category at the prestigious 2012 “Hollywood Music In Media Awards” in December); Holst’s classical symphony, “The Planets,” with its especially iconic “Jupiter”; the very name and symbols of string-instrument-maker Luna Guitars; and so many more songs and lyrics and music-related examples that you can surely chastise us for not naming your favorite. Last year, the GUIDE explored the emphasis on space-themed music in past eras, and music’s role in driving interest in a real space program, back when we had a real space program, in advocacy for fueling imaginations once again by reinstating a meaningful presence of humans voyaging in and exploring space. We believe it could happen again.
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ASTEROIDS, COMETS, METEORS, ETC., IN MUSIC…
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There are abundant musical examples of the cosmic pinball game of objects, and a larger, often incongruous, use of the names of stray stellar objects in song titles and lyrics. “In the Colorado Rocky Mountain High, I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky,” refers quite specifically to watching the Perseid Meteor Shower from a starburst deployment of musicians in sleeping bags, their heads grouped together beneath a crystal-clear night sky in Colorado.
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There are countless musical references to shooting stars, most often referenced that way instead of as meteors. (We’ll get to the musical meteors, too.) None is more iconic than the classic rock anthem, BAD COMPANY’s “Shooting Star,” a song that uses the bright-object-quickly-burning-out as the analogy for the rock musician who skyrockets to fame and falls with equal rapidity (nice live performance at www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YEmC6cTXKY).
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Let’s survey other memorable, and some obscure examples.
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Comets, though far more rare, don’t escape artistic attention:
• MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER had a minor hit and enduring concert favorite in the early ’90s with her song telling a charmingly plausible fictional tale of what happened when “Halley Came to Jackson in 1910” (recorded live at a Seattle concert in 2010 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIFylLbw5rc, or there’s the listen-only original recording, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxpSNABnGcM).
• BILL HALEY & THE COMETS were early rock and roll icons.
• TOM RUSSELL combined the astronomical and rock ’n roll comets in his song, “Halley’s Comet” aka When Halley’s Comet Hit the Ground (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDN3rOOyOnY).
• Russell’s “Halley’s Comet” song has been much-covered:
* by DAVE ALVIN & THE GUILTY WOMEN (www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRXoSIKysgg, and again, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULbL10xGjvM)
* by the TEXAS TORNADOS,
* and it’s nicely done by Canadian indie artist HOT BUTTERED SOUL, who also sets the record straight, on-camera, about how and where BILL HALEY actually met his end (www.youtube.com/watch?v=fea3AgbCA7o).
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Outside the folk-friendly genres, there are more cometary impacts:
• Icelandic artist BJORK co-wrote with musical friend SJON “The Comet Song” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3SEJSK_jqg) as the main theme for the 2010 film, “Moomins and the Comet Chase,” and then donated all the song’s revenues to charity.
• Metal headbangers DETHKLOK did their gutteral “Comet” song celebrating an apocalyptic strike with boiling oceans and the genre’s obligatory fixation with flesh-melting demises (www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYdMSvwqw70).
• There was also “Comet,” a somewhat well-known humorous children's song that describes the deleterious effects of consuming Comet Cleanser. But never mind.
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MUSICAL METEORS
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A popular passenger train to Florida in the streamline era was the “Silver Meteor,” though it never had a song like the Florida-bound “Orange Blossom Special.” But there are plenty of other musical meteors:
• There are “Meteor Choice Music Prizes” for “Best Irish Song” and “Best Irish Album” of the year.
• There’s the “Meteor Song” performed by children from Mount St. Cathernie's Primary School Armagh and the ARMAGH RHYMERS, captured as an online video when they performed for the opening of the scientific “International Meteor Conference” at the Market Place Theatre, Armagh, in September, 2010 – the whacky Rhymers perform it in cow suits, and it’s ostensibly to the melody of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” (http://vimeo.com/16483981).
• “Meteor Shower” was an instrumental track in the animated movie, “Despicable Me” (www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=hDeaeyemURA&NR=1).
• There’s “Meteor Gundam Seed,” a thoroughly clichéd Japanese anime music video with big-eyed characters blasting things from spaceships that appear stolen from every sci-fi epic of the past 40+ years, between sharing naked goggle-eyed gapes at each other (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4h4qb_meteor-gundam-seed_music).
• A very young INDIGO SMITH wails his “Meteor Song” as an electric guitar instrumental with too many people talking in the background, on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0heFx3aKyu0).
• Fans of the apocalyptic destruction of humanity will enjoy “If a Meteor Hit Earth,” a mash-up of big screen and small screen movies, but you’ll need to be okay with a pop-electronica rendition of the classical piece, “Adagio for Strings, Barber Remix,” performed by DIRECT TO DREAMS (www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=RAq76TX4iLw&NR=1).
• Cute trio METEOR GARDEN has a pleasantly jangly pop theme song, in Tagalog, kissing their way through adorably cute girls on YouTube; it’s young love, not things whirling in space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4OEhwzu5H0).
• Electronica band OWL CITY has a song called “Meteor Shower” – available as a ring tone – and it hasn’t got a damn thing to do with interaction with a celestial fragment.
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“FILK” MUSIC
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If anyone in the “Filk Music” community (yes that is spelled correctly), that underground cadre of science-fiction-based folk music singer-songwriters who write and perform in a deeper-than-deep-niche sub-sub-genre – has already written a song based on Friday’s cosmic convergence, we’ll let you know. If they surface long enough to make it available, that is. (Check out www.filk.com).
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All-in-all, things Friday could have been much worse. The meteor could have hit a big city. Or it could have smacked the ocean and caused a tsunami near that broken cruise ship, the one with 4,000 passengers trapped aboard and sewage sloshing in the passageways.
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Now THAT would have made for some interesting space-meets-sea-chantey songs.
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