asteroid defense :: essays research papers

The U.S. federal governing body is summoning the worlds top scientists to an urgent conference this summer to plan defenses against an flaming that could wipe out an American city or disrupt the unhurt countrys infrastructure. No, its not global terrorism. The scientists will map ways to combat an angulate attack, a cosmic sucker punch like the collision that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and flattened a Siberian set in 1908. While the worlds attention is focused on the real terror of terrorism, the theoretical angulate menace has been garnering a surprising amount of under-the-table attention. Britains Royal Astronomical Society hosted an international meeting of experts on the asteroid impact brat in December. In January the worlds astronomers petitioned Australias government to fund a special asteroid- respecting 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 trunk 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 pen up to Earth and could one day collide with Earth. "Weve had a couple of close shaves during the past few months," says Brian G. Marsden, with the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. bingle asteroid caused public jitters when discovered March 12. Named 2002 EM7, it came from the direction of the solarisean astronomical blind 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-t hirds of a football regionand could have flattened a city, unleashing the energy of a five-megaton nuclear bomb. "I think Mother Nature has given us yet another(prenominal) wake-up call," says Donald K.