Warnings About Asteroid 1997 XF11

Astronomer Brian Marsden of the International Astronomical Union thinks that we should not worry about an asteroid striking the earth because technology will be available in 30 years to deflect it (March 12).

Well, since the advent of computers in the late 1960s, how long has the government known that the year 2000 was coming and just how much preparation did they take to ward off the year 2000 millennium bug? God help us all, we just might get to see what the dinosaurs saw.

RICHARD OLIVIER

Chatsworth

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The news of asteroid 1997 XF11 brings to mind the 1949 science fiction novel “The Big Eye” by Max Ehrlich. The time is 1960, and the United States and Soviet Union are on the verge of nuclear annihilation. Then comes news that an international body of astronomers has discovered a massive solar object on a collision course with Earth that means the end of the world. Almost overnight, world leaders forget their enmities and begin to plan for the end, calculated for Christmas Day.

As the object named the Big Eye looms closer and closer, people prepare for their last days, and on Christmas Eve, the world gathers for its final hours. But miraculously the Big Eye veers away at the last moment! The hand of God has preserved life, and people vow never to return to the hatreds of old.

Several years later, the successor to the late astronomer who first identified the Big Eye sorts through old papers from his mentor and discovers that the international scientists knew all along that catastrophe would be narrowly averted. The prediction of collision had been their conspiracy to save mankind from itself.

DAVID SMOLLAR

Long Beach

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In the editorial “The Sky May Be Falling,” March 13, you conclude with “By the way, XF11 is expected to come through the neighborhood at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, on a Thursday. At least it wouldn’t hit during rush hour.”

By 2028, that will probably still be rush hour.

BOB ABRAHAMS

Los Angeles