Final Impact

Life As the World Knows It

New York, Early October...
[fade to Marti Nunciata]

From the middle segment of the seven o'clock Cable News Network
broadcast:

"Excitement continues to build as astronomers around the world prepare to record the impact of the rogue planet Millennium on the far side of Jupiter in late November. The rogue planet was dubbed Millennium because when discovered by the Kin Peak National Observatory in Arizona, it was originally estimated to strike Jupiter early in the year 2000. Now, however, astronomers estimate the impact will occur on November twenty-sixth, the Friday after Thanksgiving. This is what Professor Frank Gelasias had to say when asked about the more than one month discrepancy between the originally projected date of impact and when scientists now believe the rogue planet will actually strike the gas giant."

[cut to window and expand to fill, Professor Frank Gelasias]

"There are many factors which can affect the date we calculate that a body in space will strike another one, or pass close by, so much changing information on an object of this size and speed, that exact projections early on are chancy at best. But we're fairly certain that this one will strike the day after Thanksgiving, and when it does, the impact on Jupiter will dwarf what Shoemaker-Levy did to the planet in 1994. Millennium is huge by comparison, and the resulting damage to Jupiter's atmosphere could change the way we see the planet--its gas atmosphere--for decades."