A recent total lunar eclipse occurred when the Moon passed directly behind the Earth in December last year. Then an annular eclipse occurred when the Sun was exactly in line a little while ago. It was the celestial show of the century since 129 years ago, so the event attracted the attention of all the people in Japan. Watching this mystic show reminds us of our existence in the universe...
Wondering how many planets like the earth exist in this universe. We can’t even imagine it, can we? But unless something special such as a lunar or annular eclipse or meteor shower and so on happens in the sky, we don’t usually pay attention to what is happening there above our heads.
There are so many artificial satellites in the space, which we can’t see clearly (In fact, it’s not invisible but we don’t usually recognize them). Do you remember that those satellites became a popular topic last year? It was an article about debris of the satellites which would fall down to the earth. Pieces of the American satellite fell onto the ground without burning up in the atmosphere in September. It was announced that the “estimated probability of a human casualty risk was1/3200”. There was another report about the German satellite in October, too. In the latter case, the probability was announced as 1/2000…
It’s said that the debris of about 50 satellites are falling on earth annually. It’s surprising, isn’t it? The debris is called “space debris”, and it’s said that the amount of the space debris is about 15,900 pieces in total. Also it’s said that the frequency that these would enter the atmosphere is about once a week. Most of these get burnt up in the atmosphere. But there are a few cases of the debris actually getting to the ground on earth a few times a year.
It’s scary, when we imagine that the number of old satellites will increase more and more in the days ahead and we would have to always pay attention to the sky in case they may fall on us and hit us.
We often use a phrase “it’s as rare as winning a lottery”…If we win a lottery we will be happy, but we don’t want to get hit by the space debris, do we? But you don’t have to worry. In case you are very unfortunate and get hit by it, there is “The Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects” and you will be covered by the country that launched the space object. However, in the case that you get hit by any meteor, there is no guarantee, so getting hit by the piece of satellite sounds better (?). But they don’t guarantee your life though…
Speaking of a life, we often see a scene in a TV drama in which a doctor says “the probability of success of the operation is 50 50”. TV dramas aren’t real though. But it’s true that doctors are never able to say it’s 100% in fact. Even if they say it is 99%, there is still a chance for you to be in the other 1%. In other words, it may be possible for you to die once out of 100 times. I guess that doctors are only allowed to say something like that though.
Suppose another case where people drive cars every day, a 1% chance of death can mean that they have a chance to die three days (three times) of a year. Even if we have lots of lives, it will never be enough. For more information, the chances for which people in Japan get involved in a traffic accident is 1/111 a year.
It sounds very hard to live in this world, however the probability that each of us was born must be astronomical. Because most of the sperm die before they get to the egg. Anyway, billions of people are on earth and have only limited encounters. In these limited encounters, finding this web site must’ve been a miracle. Let’s say cheers for this miraculous event…
•There is a spaceport which is called Spaceport America in New Mexico, United States. The price for about two hours travel will be 200,000 US dollars. I wonder how many people can get on a spaceship.
•As for the space objects which fall to earth, it’s said that the amount of meteors is more than the pieces of satellites.
