ASTRONOMIA |
Astronomía de Catástrofes |
ABSTRACT [RESUMEN]
During 1998 several cosmic or astronomical events occurred that made the public painfully aware of potential celestial catastrophes. The story of the year was the announcement that the obscure object 1997 XF11 had great probability of hitting the Earth in 2028. This created an expected uproar in the public. Although, later the probability of crashing against the Earth was downgraded by a different group of researchers, the story did not go away. The Leonid showers, later in the year resurrected the subject with the help of Hollywood, which by then had produced two blockbusters based on hypothetical catastrophes. In this article the sequence of astronomical events during 1998 related to cosmic collisions is briefly described.