Jim Haberkorn

Redfish Jim Haberkorn

Rulon Hurt doesn't believe the earth is going to end from an asteroid strike, but his Swiss wife, Yohaba, disagrees. So does her grandfather, former CERN director Leonard Steenberg.

One-eighty-two Elsa is shaped like a potato - a potato 27-miles wide and pock-mocked with numerous craters, the remnants of impacts from other, smaller asteroids. Elsa originated several billion years ago, at the dawn of the solar system, a non-descript member of the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. At about the time Alexander the Great was conquering Persia, Elsa was side-swiped by a larger asteroid, lost some of its mass, but continued hurtling through the emptiness of space - this time on a different orbital path that will have it colliding with the earth just south of Geneva, Switzerland on April 13, 2029.

Its 27-mile-wide mass moving at 30,000 mph will plunge through the earth's 60-mile thick atmosphere in just over a second and destroy the earth. On impact it will release the energy-equivalent of 200 trillion tons of TNT. Even if it lands in the 6.86 mile-deep Mariana Trench it will still pierce the earth's crust. The resulting earthquake will topple every structure on the planet. All the oceans will boil. The earth's atmosphere will catch fire. Everything will die.

Shortly before his death, Albert Einstein predicted this would happen, even down to the exact date, but had time to confide his discovery and his proposed solution to only his three brilliant protégés. The youngest of them, Leonard Steenberg, still lives, and has dedicated his life to fulfilling Einstein's last and greatest mission.

Trouble is, mankind doesn't want to be saved.