Mr Gregg Manning

Death of a Planet Mr Gregg Manning

Publisher Marketing: There were some who thought they could hear the asteroid approaching, hear the whoosh as it carved its way through the atmosphere. Those people who could have heard it would not have lived to talk about it. It was just after ten in the morning when it struck, as it entered the earths atmosphere it began to glow, a smaller asteroid would have been burnt up completely by this but the sheer size of this one prevented that. It was visible from all over Europe and many people stopped and stared as if hypnotized. During the last few days its approach had looked quite graceful, almost slow but the reality was much different. As this monstrous rock hurtled towards the earth it was travelling at over forty thousand miles an hour. Just seconds before it struck the air that it was pushing ahead of itself slammed into the ground flattening everything around it but then the asteroid finally struck the ground with the force of a hundred million nuclear bombs. It pushed down into the ground turning the rock molten. The blast wave travelled out from the crater vapourising everything in its path. Bearing in mind that seventy percent of the earths surface is covered with water it was perhaps more than just bad luck that the asteroid came down on land. Although the earths crust under the oceans tends to be rather thinner ranging from five to ten kilometres thick it is much denser. Over land the crust although considerably thicker is comprised of much less dense rock and therefore the impact that much worse. The asteroid punched a hole into the earth like a bullet through cheese. The rock in the immediate crater turned molten and as the asteroid dug deep into the earth so hundreds of millions of tons of rock were sent up into the air. Some of these rocks no bigger than a matchbox others the size of a lorry. These rocks themselves were now travelling at break neck speed only to come hurtling back to earth to create havoc in their own right. Some of these were thrown hundreds of miles away falling from the sky like missiles . The blast pushed the air in all directions from the crater flattening everything in its path. Anyone who was close enough to see the blast was dead before their brain had registered what they were looking at. No one had ever experienced an explosion of this magnitude and although the scientists had done their best to predict the outcome they were pitifully wrong. Damage on this scale is beyond any ones imagination. The earth itself trembled as did mankind almost as if it too were frightened it would not survive this catastrophe.