Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#10
![]() |
|||
|
|||
![]() "Dan Weir" wrote in message om... I've got you there...if a 7-mile-wide asteroid hit Earth, certainly 90 percent of the world's population would perish. Ask any scientist who's studied the so-called "Crater of Doom" that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And that's not the fevered (but brilliant) imagination of Steven Spielberg...that is the collective conclusion of hundreds of geologists, astronomers, historians, climate specialists, paleontologists (sp?), and so on, and so forth. No doubt. An impact from a 7 mile wide asteroid would be very bad news. I suspect that the "Planet X" you are referring to is indeed an asteroid (but it just may indeed be a planet - see below). Planet X is supposedly an Earth sized planet, if I recall correctly. To be fair to the SW prophets though, Planet X wasn't supposed to actually impact with Earth, just fly by and spin the poles around enough to make the world largely inhabitable. The flyby vs. impact distinction isn't one the SW broadcasters often make. What is the boundary between an asteroid and a planet anyway? Asteriods have gravity, they have moons, and the larger ones have atmospheres. All characteristics of planets. Remember, the word "asteroid" comes from the Greek expression for "star-like" because these relatively small heavenly bodies looked like pinpoints of light compared to the planets in our Solar System. Back to Chuck: Before Y2K, he told his audience about a science-fiction book written in the 1950's called "The Big Red Eye." This horror tome was about a 4,000-mile-wide planet that had been torn from its solar system near the center of our galaxy and had travelled billions of light-years since almost the beginning of the universe (the "big bang"). Somehow, by an incredibly bad streak of luck, the planet surfed and coasted on the gravitational pull of various stars, supernovae, planets, and various and sundry space junk, to land smack dab in the middle of OUR solar system - and on a collision course with Earth. Yes! I suspect all such fantasies were rooted in Percival Lowell's search for what he called Planet X, before WW2. He was looking for slight perturbations in the orbits of other planets. No doubt some imaginative people said "What if something's coming our way?" At first, of course, the planet (which, like Mars, is red in appearance) looks like a faint red star. Then it gradually gets brighter, and eventually it appears as a small red disk visible at night - the "Big Red Eye" - and by then Earth is racked with mile-high tidal waves that wipe out New York, Washington, Israel, the west coast of Africa, and Australia. Of course, there is a complete breakdown of society and the global economy, and mankind reverts back to the early Bronze Age. That's the Planet X Prophesy! And that's as far as Chuck Harder got with the book. Mind you, I haven't read it (I'd love to), yet I find Chuck's lurid description at once repelling and compelling. Remember, Chuck Harder was comparing "The Big Red Eye" to the Y2K fiasco. That proves that he is NO MODERATE. He, like the "shortwave prophets" you eloquently describe, is a lunatic-fringe, end-of-the-world, Armageddonist, survivalist KOOK! In comparison to the other SW hosts, Chuck Harder is a moderate lunatic-fringe, end-of-the-world, Armageddonist, survivalist KOOK. He's hardly in the big league of false scary predictions with Brother Stair, Alex Jones, James Lloyd, Texe Marrs or any of a dozen SWers. Chuck Harder's scary stories are too infrequent, and carry too little impact for him to run with the big dogs. Chuck Harder is a single shot .22 in a world of .50 caliber machine guns. That is my opinion. Sorry you don't like it, but life's a bitch - and then you marry one! Wait 'till you find out the penalty for bigamy! Frank Dresser |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
![]() |
||||
Thread | Forum | |||
chuckie blast from the past..... | CB | |||
Another one bites the dust - Chuch Harder is no more | Shortwave | |||
Chuck Harder Show | Shortwave | |||
To ALL DX! | Dx | |||
ARRL's Incoming QSL Burro Screwing NON ARRL members! | Policy |