Lesson from the Skies

This last week end was an extraordinary one.  Why? Because there were two celestial events, one which had been forecasted some time ahead, but the other was quite, quite unexpected.


An asteroid with the size of about 50mwide  (Asteroid 2012 DA-14) had flown past the Earth, and its path was even closer than that of some articificial satellites.  If this asteroid had collided with the Earth, it could likely have triggered a catastrophic event that would have quite dire consequences.   Fortunately, its orbital path did not include a collision course with the Earth this time, and it just passed us by uneventfully. 

The other event, on the other hand, was quite unexpected, principally because the flying object (a meteorite) was only about 17 m wide, quite dark to observe in the night sky and only burned up brightly when it entered the Earth's atmosphere over the Chelyabinsk region next to Kazakhstan.  About a thousand and five hundred people were injured to some extent because the meteorite had created a shock wave (very high air pressure) during its descent and cause not a few windows to shatter, somewhat akin to a nuclear explosion about 20 to 30 km above.



So what is my point?

In business, we may be able to catch trends through observations and monitoring the markets, etc.  However, sometimes, we may be caught unaware from seemingly small events which may seem innocuous and below our radar, but which may have a very significant effect after all.  We should beware of small events that could snowball into something much larger, much more significant.

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