http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1003asteriod-ON.html
In the 1998 science-fiction film "Armageddon," a heroic Bruce Willis saved Earth from a marauding asteroid by detonating a nuclear device at the last possible second. The explosion vaporized Willis' character and split the killer space rock into twin boulders that harmlessly whizzed past the planet. Humanity lived to see another sunrise. In real life, a solution to the threat of civilization-ending death from above must wait until Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Air Force figure out what they are going to do next. NASA, the nation's civilian space agency, has mapped all the really big asteroids, roughly 10 miles in diameter, zipping around the solar system and concluded that none poses a collision risk. If one did hit, it would cause extinction equivalent to the asteroid strike believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Pesky smaller asteroids, more than half a mile in diameter, also concern scientists because a head-on collision with one would distress the climate enough to depress global temperatures, cause massive crop failure and possibly break down civil society as we know it. The good news: NASA has identified and calculated the orbits of 619 of these rocks, known as Near Earth Objects, and not a one is on course to collide with the home planet. The bad news: 300 to 700 more undiscovered travelers could be lurking in the darkness. The other bad news: Neither NASA nor the Air Force has plans or equipment to divert an incoming asteroid or comet like they do in the movies. "When I go to my leaders and talk about something that happens every 100 million years, they feel that is something we can defer from this year's budget," said Brig. Gen. Simon Worden, deputy director for operations with the U.S. Strategic Command. Worden was one of several government officials who testified Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing on the threat near Earth asteroids pose. "It's just a matter of time before we're faced with an event unparalleled in human history," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who organized the hearing and repeatedly expressed his fear that the sky might fall on his Southern California congressional district. The truly disturbing news from the hearing: Space rocks keep hurtling by Earth only to be detected after they pass. This year alone, three previously unknown asteroids sped past. The closest was one-third the distance to the Moon, a hair's width in astronomical terms. Worden also warned lawmakers of another near calamity. On June 6, U.S. early warning satellites detected an energy release in the atmosphere comparable to the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A small asteroid, probably less than 6 miles in diameter, exploding over the Mediterranean caused the event. Had the asteroid exploded over India or Pakistan, two nuclear powers on the brink of war at that time, the event could have ignited a nuclear horror because neither country has the sensors to differentiate between a near Earth object detonation and a nuclear weapon, Worden said. While U.S. satellites can detect the difference, the Air Force now has no way of sharing that information with other countries, he said. xponent Big Boom Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
