UnNews:Leap year mess-up to be corrected by 2016
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This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation. |
29 February 2013
GENEVA, Switcherland -- Since the recent addition of a new leap year to the Western, or The One And Only Correct Calendar by Pope Benedictus the Leaper, astronomers and other scientists have been trying to come up with logical, cost-effective ways of nullifying the negative effects of this final papal move in the game of his stepping down from the throne of the upholder of Christendom, or those parts of it which we call Catholic. Early this morning, some of the more proactive members of the scientific community gathered in a conference just outside Geneva to mull over the question and marvel at "that huge machine there that makes particles go fast." They could easily drop everything they were doing and hold their little summit, this being a leap year and all.
"The way we stand, there is simply a problem in our calendar now!" declared the spokesman of the community, Doctor Eminent, in a pressing press conference approximately halfway through the summit. Without any further comment, he then ambled back to his colleagues to marvel at the huge machine.
A few seconds later, Dr. Eminent reappeared to declare that the scientific community had decided to devote all their time for finding ways of attracting asteroids to hit the Earth and thus slow it down enough to make up for the fault in the calendar.
"We see this as a continuation of the old enmity between Science and the church. While none of us has anything personal against the Pope or the idea of Christendom in general, the high-handedness of His Holiness would frankly burn out anyone's capacitor. We have decided to show him we have a trick or two in our sleeves as well."
When asked if an asteroid big enough to affect the Earth's speed would be a danger to life on the planet, Dr. Eminent smiled condescendingly and explained: "As you know, mass basically means weight. This means that size is not the only trait an asteroid has to have. The momentum and speed also count. As the speed of an object increases, so does its mass. The asteroid probably would have to be at least a few hundreds miles wide in length. As you know the last asteroid that hit the Earth wasn't exactly gargantuan, but equaled the power of only a few thousand atom bombs put together. It wiped out the dinosaurs. We will obviously need something far larger to affect the change we are looking for, and I think that with our presently planned asteroid-attracting devices we should be able to get one by the year 2016, a few days before the next leap year messes up all our calculations."