Thoughts on Leadership: Finding Gratitude from Asteroids

By Gino Blefari

This week my travels found me starting Monday with my usual WIG calls then flying to Minneapolis. On Tuesday morning, I threw out the first pitch at the 2023 North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA) Softball World Series then spent the day with the Edina Realty team at the Minnesota State Fair for a multi-office sales meeting that took place at the picnic area within the State Fairgrounds. I also conducted an afternoon training session with the Edina Realty and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices North Properties sales managers. On Wednesday, I traveled home, and this morning I sat down to write this post to you.

Every Thursday, I walk with a local real estate agent, and we start at 5:30 in the morning to get our steps in together. Today, it was 5 a.m. when I was driving to our meeting spot, completely dark, and there in the sky I saw the rare blue supermoon – a sight we won’t see again until 2037 – and it made me think of the universe, the stars, and asteroids. It reminded me of an interesting podcast episode I had listened to featuring Randall Carlson, a builder, architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, and geological explorer. So, I’d like to share some of what he said with you for today’s post.

In the podcast, Carlson spoke about asteroids, and how many near-misses Earth has had with asteroids over the last several decades. On the topic of these hyper-velocity impacts, he said: “We’ve actually been rather lucky in the past few centuries that we’ve not had any major impacts.”

Lucky?

My mind was blown. Could it really be true that the survival of the human race up until this very moment has been a matter of luck?

According to Carlson, that’s exactly the case. It’s been estimated that in the more than 4.5 billion years planet Earth has been around, it’s been hit by asteroids at least 190 times. In recent years, it’s been a series of lucky misses.

And Carlson is on a mission to record every one of them. For more than 45 years, Carlson has been tracking what he calls “Close Encounters,” or instances when asteroids were discovered to nearly hit Earth. (Let’s remember, “nearly hit Earth” is in relative terms because if you think about how vast space is, an asteroid traveling at 60,000 miles per hour is just 75,000 miles away as it hurtles through the cosmos is actually a “near miss.”) Since 1988, Carlson has been collecting various news reports of these “close call” asteroids and on the podcast, he reviewed more than 20 of these stories. (If you want to see the “Close Encounters” list, scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Some of the asteroids that have buzzed past Earth measure the size of a football field, and some measure more than 1,300 feet in diameter. An 800-meter asteroid hitting Earth, Carlson explained, could wipe out an area bigger than Texas. Others, if they had collided with Earth, would have created “one of the worst disasters in human history,” he said. Some asteroids are farther away on their trajectory through space – half a million miles or twice the distance to the moon – and others are closer, like within-the-moon’s-orbit closer.

Carlson’s “Close Encounters” list is astounding, offering dozens of documented instances when huge asteroids have zoomed right by our planet, sometimes only discovered after they were within striking distance, and some discovered just 24 hours before traveling past Earth. Carlson admitted that there are hundreds of near-miss asteroid examples going back thousands of years. “It’s a very, very common thing,” he explained.

The scenario was likened to an action movie where the hero keeps getting shot at by multiple villains during the fight scenes, and is never hit, emerging victoriously to battle it out another day. That is the history of our Earth.

So, what’s the message? While it might seem depressing to know that we’ve been just this far from being hit by a high-velocity, catastrophic torpedo in the sky, when I heard Carlson rattle off his “Close Encounters” list, I didn’t feel sad at all. In fact, I felt only one thing: gratitude. How lucky are we to wake up every day, to have the opportunity to work, to serve clients, to help our community, and to make an impact when all these “cosmic beasts” as Carlson calls them, threaten to make their own impact, traveling through the very space we reside in, whizzing by us at tremendous speeds and nearly missing Earth? It’s incredible. It’s gratifying. It’s why we can look up into a night sky scattered with distant stars, or even a rare blue supermoon, and feel grateful for the life we’re living, the universe we’re all inhabiting, and this beautiful Earth we call home.

Randall Carlson’s “Close Encounters” List

• 1988: March 23 – Earth Just Dodges Big Asteroid
• 1989: Aug. 25 “Castalia” – Giant Asteroid Makes Close Pass by Earth
• 1991: Jan. 18 – Near Miss of Earth by Small Asteroid (“Now of course, a ‘small asteroid’ can still do a … lot of damage,” said Carlson.)
• 1994: Dec. 09 – Asteroid Comes within 65,000 Miles of Earth
• 1996: May 18 – It was a Close Call for Planet Earth
• 2000: June 22 – Study Raises Number of Dangerous Asteroids
• 2000: Oct. 24 – Asteroid Estimates ‘Too Low,’ Nine Objects Have Come Close to Earth Since 1991
• 2000: Dec. 22 – Asteroid Makes Close Approach
• 2001: May 07 – Scientists Worry Over Asteroids
• 2002: Jan 07 – Huge Asteroid Nearly Misses Earth
• 2002: Jan 07 – Large Asteroid Passes Close to Earth (As Carlson explained, this asteroid was large enough to wipe out France and passed Earth at half million miles, or twice the distance to the moon. “Had it been on a collision course, it would have created one of the worst disasters in human history,” a NASA expert said in the article.)
• 2002: March 08 – Asteroid Buzzes Highlighting Cosmic Blind Spot (Carlson said this asteroid was not seen until after it flew harmlessly by because “unless you’re looking in the right place for it, you’re not going to necessarily see it.”)
• 2002: June 14 – Asteroid 2002MN Gives Earth its Closest Shave in Years (This asteroid was the size of football pitch, 100 yards in diameter and flew about 75,000 miles away, or well inside moon’s orbit, explained Carlson, who called this one “really close.”)
• 2002: Aug. 17 – ‘Near Miss’ Asteroid Whizzes Past Earth (“This is 800 meters wide,” said Carlson. “Eight hundred meters could wipe out an area bigger than the state of Texas and it would have global effects,” he said.)
• 2003: Sept. 27 – Closest Asteroid Yet Flies Past Earth
• 2004: Jan. 13 – Earth Almost Put on Impact Alert (As the article stated: “Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1, had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours.”)
• 2004: Feb. 27 – Near Miss Raises Rocky Questions
• 2004: March 18 – Asteroid Soars Past Earth Oh So Closely
• 2004: Oct. 20 – Comet Strike Surprisingly More Likely
• 2005: Feb. 04 – Asteroid 2004 MN4: A Really Near Miss!
• 2008: Jan. 28 – Large Asteroid Zooms Past Earth
• 2009: March 22 – Asteroid Dodges Earth by Near-miss
• 2010: Jan. 13 – Small Asteroid 2010 AL30 Will Fly Past the Earth
• 2010: Sept. 08 – In One Day, Two Asteroids Buzz Earth
• 2011: June 29 – Asteroid Just Buzzed Earth – Came Closer Than the Moon
• 2013: Feb. 15 – Asteroid 2012 DA14 Earth Flyby of Feb. 15 Complete Coverage
• 2013: Sept. 16 – Big Asteroid Buzzes Past Earth and Will Again in 19 Years (This one, as Carlson explained, was 1,300 feet in diameter.)
• 2015: Oct. 11 – Near Miss: Giant Asteroid TWO MILES Wide Traveling at 40,000mph Zooms Past Earth
• 2015: Oct. 31 – Halloween Asteroid Resembling Skull Narrowly Misses Earth
• 2016: Oct. 31 – The 2016 TB57 Asteroid Will Come Closest to Earth on Oct. 31
• 2017: Oct. 12 – Giant Asteroid to Give Earth a Very Close Shave (This asteroid flew by at a distance of 27,000 miles away or one-eighth the distance between the Earth and the moon.)
• 2017: Dec 16 – Giant 5km Asteroid to Make Closest Approach to Earth in 40 Years Just One Week before Christmas
• 2018: Sept. 03 – Another Giant Asteroid, 2015/FP118 Will Whizz by Earth this Monday, September 3rd
• 2018: May 04 – Asteroid Size of a Football Field Will Miss Hitting Earth by Just 26,000 Miles Tomorrow
• 2019: April 18 – A House-Size Asteroid Zipped by Earth Today
• 2019: June 29 – ‘City Killer’ Asteroid Misses Earth and Scientists Had No Idea
• 2019: July 23 – Asteroid’s Near-miss Is a Huge Wake-up Call
• 2019: Oct. 01 – Four Asteroids Are Buzzing Earth in Flybys Today But Don’t Worry (As the article explained, three of these asteroids were discovered within the last 24 hours of publishing the story.)
• 2019: Nov. 19 – Enormous Asteroid Measuring More than 2,000 Feet Wide to Whizz Past Our Planet Tomorrow
• 2019: Dec. 20 – Comet Warning: NASA Admits ‘We’re Not Going to Know’ When Space Rock Flies at Earth
• 2020: Jan. 20 – NASA Warns 3 Asteroids to Approach Earth Tomorrow
• 2020: June 5 – Biggest Asteroid to Pass Close (and Undetected) This Year
• 2021: March 21 – The Biggest Asteroid of 2021 Is Going to Zoom Past Earth Tonight as Fast as 100,00 Kilometers Per Hour or 60,000 Miles Per Hour
• 2021: Dec. 08 – Three Huge Asteroids to pass Earth in Last Days of 201, Including One That’s 850 Feet Wide
• 2021: Dec. 11 – NASA Asteroid Warning: Eiffel Tower-sized Asteroid ‘Narrowly’ Missed Earth in December
• 2022: Jan. 18 – A Kilometer-wide Asteroid Will Make Its Closest Pass by Earth Next Week
• 2022: Jan. 18 – Asteroid 2022: How Big Is NASA Tracked Asteroid Which Passed Earth, and Could It Hit Our Planet in the Future?