|
|
 |
|
 |
|
The End is Nigh
by Lembit Opik
|
|
|
Could an asteroid collision with Earth wipe out all life? We spoke to Dr Richard Crowther, organiser of a conference on the subject, about the threat. Here the Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik spells out why he thinks governments should take this issue seriously.
So Ladbrokes are giving 5000 to 1 against an asteroid impact. It's a timely estimate. From January 20th to January 23rd, a conference in Frascati, Italy, was held to discuss the threat of impacts by Near Earth Objects, and their frequency.
In fact delegates, including myself, all agreed the fundamental point. The chances of a catastrophic impact by a hurtling space rock are 100%. It WILL happen again. We just don't know when.
This isn't scare-mongering or science fiction. The earth is peppered with the remnants of colossal craters - the calling card of asteroids and comets which hit earth. Most famous of these was the 16km diameter asteroid which landed in the Yukatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. It wiped out the dinosaurs… and seven tenths of all life on earth.
What asteroid experts take for granted, but others sometimes find hard to grasp, is the sheer explosive force of these relatively small objects. How can a 16km wide rock - a speck in comparison to the 13,000km earth - wreak such havoc? It's all about energy. The debris of a car crash on a motorway shows the damage one tonne of metal can do at 100 kilometres an hour. By comparison, these space rocks weigh billions of tonnes and travel at many tens of kilometres a SECOND. The faster their impact speed, the more damage they do.
The Frascati conference also discussed less deadly but more frequent smaller objects. If a 1km wide object came down over, say Paris, the European Union would be burned to cinders within about two hours. These "continent killers" probably hit us every hundred thousand years or so, though estimates vary. But all conference delegates agreed there WILL be another one.
The good news is we're not powerless. A UK Government report written by its "Near Earth Object Task Force" in September 2000 confirmed we CAN act. With half a dozen telescopes around the world, a few computers and a decade's worth of observations, we can spot 9 out of 10 objects heading our way. It's an insurance policy, giving us enough time to literally nudge an incoming object out of earth's path. Again, we can probably achieve this with today's technology.
The Chair of the conference, Richard Crowther wants us to take the chance to do something about those dangers soon. The scientists agree. The politicians have to be convinced. It would be better to achieve that now, rather than saying "I told you so" while gazing down into a smoking hole in the ground which had previously been called "The Midlands."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Asteroid Strike |
|
|
|
 |
|
All out nuclear holocaust. |
|
|
|
 |
|
Global pestilence: a ravaging locust swarm? |
|
|
|
 |
|
An alien invasion could spell the end. |
|
|
|
 |
|
A Great Flood? |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
