This sounds like a B-movie, but it's the real thing. There's a big asteroid out there that's being tracked by NASA. It is forecast to come quite close to the earth on April 13th, 2029. (That's Friday the 13th by the way.) NASA's Near Earth Object Program tracks things like this, and assigns a probability of Earth impact to each object they track. This particular asteroid, now named 2004MN4, is currently forecast to have a 1 in 37 chance of hitting the Earth, where the impact would be the equivalent of a 1500 Megaton explosive. Here's a link to the info at NASA's site: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/2004mn4.html This 1 in 37 chance happens to be exactly the same probability of hitting a number straight-up on a single-zero roulette wheel. So, in some cosmic sense, we are the croupier, and the heavens have just bet on "Black 13".
Single or Double Zero wheel? If the Earth is a roulette wheel, that gives us advantage players 24 1/2 years to take advantage of the unbalanced areas & make a killing before the great Griffin asteroid in the sky brings the final 86-ing down on us... -holly d.
The comparison was with a single-zero wheel. But... NASA has revised their numbers, just since earlier today. It's now a real longshot, at 1 in 56,000 for impact. As Rosanna Rosanna-danna used to say: "Never mind."
