Georgia Institute of Technology

In last night’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama not only laid out the agenda for his second term, he started to show his true colors. Mark Zachary Taylor, assistant professor of political economy, explains why Obama may be bolder in the days ahead. 

I think we began seeing more of the "true" Obama emerge in the State of the Union. He arrived in office in 2009 with a host of major problems to deal with and not much of a personal policy agenda. But with the Great Recession fading, the wars in the Middle East winding down and health care cooling off, Obama is now free to advance his own policy agenda, which he has had four years to consider.

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We won't see it here in Atlanta, but an asteroid the size of half a football field will fly "close" to Earth on Friday. It's the largest asteroid of that size on record to come within 17,000 miles of us. Georgia Tech Observatory Director Jim Sowell talks about why it's both a big deal and much ado about nothing.

On relative scales, asteroid 2012 DA14 gets to within about seven percent the distance from the moon, but it will still be about 17,000 miles from the surface of the Earth. There aren't many Earth-orbiting, manmade satellites at that distance, so the chance of any type of interaction is extremely small.

The closest approach occurs above Indonesia. Even if it was over Atlanta, at best it would appear as a small point of light in Georgia Tech’s 16-inch telescope.

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