Asteroids Passing by Earth

“Two Asteroids Pass by Earth Wednesday” is an article which appeared on the Astronomy Magazine website. It was written on September 8th, 2010. The article is about two recent near-earth asteroids which came very close (by space standards) to the earth. One of the asteroids is 32-65 feet in diameter and the other one is estimated to be between 20 and 46 feet in diameter. According to the article, their orbits will bring them within 154,000 miles and 49,088 miles, respectively, of the earth.

The author of this article did a fairly good job of describing the scientific importance of this topic for a non-expert audience. For example, the author describes how there are 50 million undiscovered asteroids of the same size as the near-earth ones mentioned in the article. With this many asteroids, it is statistically possible that one may strike the earths atmosphere every ten years. That information is certainly important to every living species on earth. Having the capabilities to do this kind of research is very important. This article is also interesting to the average audience member who may not have a large interest in space or astronomy. This is because it immediately grabs one’s attention with the headline which was chosen. Also, to the average audience member who may not have much interest in space, the author managed to write while only using minor amounts of jargon. The style of writing will keep even the person without any knowledge of space or astronomy engaged.

Personally, I understood everything in the article. Of course, the article was not written in a confusing manner or written for astronomers or space experts. I also found the article very interesting. The fact that there was an illustration included of how “close” the asteroids were to get to the planet definitely grabbed my attention. There was one potential term which the author did use, however, which may not be known to all audiences. The author noted that the asteroids would pass within 0.6...