asteroid defense :: essays research papers

The U.S. federal government is summoning the worlds top scientists to an urgent conference this summer to plan defenses against an attack that could wipe out(a) an American city or disrupt the whole countrys infrastructure. No, its not global terrorism. The scientists will map ways to combat an asteroid attack, a cosmic saphead punch like the collision that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and flattened a Siberian forest in 1908. While the worlds attention is focused on the real menace of terrorism, the theoretical asteroid menace has been garnering a surprising amount of behind-the-scenes attention. Britains Royal Astronomical Society hosted an international concourse of experts on the asteroid impact threat in December. In January the worlds astronomers petitioned Australias government to fund a special asteroid-detecting telescope. In February NASA announced the "Workshop on scientific Requirements for Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids," which wil l be conducted in Washington in September. In March, NASA activated "Sentry," a new system to monitor near-Earth objects (NEOs) and assess their threat to Earth. NEOs are small objectsasteroids and certain cometsthat orbit in the solar system relatively close to Earth and could one day collide with Earth. "Weve had a correspond of close shaves during the past few months," says Brian G. Marsden, with the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One asteroid caused public jitters when discovered March 12. Named 2002 EM7, it came from the direction of the sunan astronomical artifice spot where objects are hidden in the suns glare. Astronomers didnt detect 2002 EM7 until four days after it came within 288,000 miles (460,000 kilometers) of Earth, which they regarded as a close encounter. The moon is about 239,000 miles, or 385,000 kilometers, from the Earth. The asteroid was about 200 feet (60 meters) in diameterbig enough to fill two-thir ds of a football fieldand could have flattened a city, unleashing the free energy of a five-megaton nuclear bomb. "I think Mother Nature has given us yet another wake-up call," says Donald K.