Word: mile
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...usually don't get involved," said Aurora Nunes of North Attleboro, who walked a five-mile circuit with her five-year-old son Erin. "I just recently found out about it. I particularly like [the fact] that I can help out without a lot of work...
...realize how close you came to disaster. While you were blissfully unaware of the danger, a huge asteroid whizzed past the earth, coming closer than any other such heavenly body seen in 52 years. If the giant clump of rock -- half a mile across by one estimate -- had hit the planet, it would have packed the wallop of thousands of H-bombs and possibly killed millions of people. If it had come down in an ocean, it could have triggered tidal waves hundreds of yards high...
Before you become alarmed, however, you should understand that this was a close encounter only in a relative sense. At its closest, the asteroid was about 450,000 miles away, roughly twice the distance between the earth and the moon. Still, in cosmic terms it was virtually a direct hit. No asteroid has been sighted so near since 1937, when Hermes, a minor planet nearly half a mile in diameter, passed by at about the same distance...
...saying the new asteroid may be only 100 yds. across. Even if the smaller size is correct, no one would want to have 1989FC land in the backyard. A 100-yd.- wide asteroid hitting the earth at a speed of nearly 50,000 m.p.h. could dig a crater a mile or so across and several hundred feet deep -- similar in size to a gaping hole in the Arizona earth, known as Meteor Crater, that was blasted out some 40,000 years ago. Such an impact today would be enough to wipe out a major population center...
...strikes earth, a similar asteroid is destined to do so eventually. It has happened so many times before, in fact, that the earth's surface would be as pockmarked as the moon's were it not for the cosmetic effects of erosion caused by the oceans and atmosphere. Half-mile asteroids are a dime a dozen in the solar system, and they run into the planet once every 100,000 years, on average. That means the next one could strike in a thousand lifetimes -- or before the end of next week...