[FPSPACE] Asteroid impact talk in Flagstaff

[Jens Kieffer-Olsen]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Portree [mailto:dsfportree at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 5:39 PM

> For anyone in Arizona - Ted Bowell has been hunting asteroids for several
> decades. I like his characterization of the level of threat. In general,
> the mainstream asteroid-hunting community is striving to avoid causing
> confusion and unnecessary alarm. 

 Hi David, my Muscovite roommate of long ago ...

 I'm sorry to say that I dislike the above 'attitude of appeasement'
 just as much as does Ed G.

 There seems to me to be two aspects to the layman's failure to
 comprehend the threat from asteroids and comets.

 First, too many people seem not to recognize any responsibility
 for events likely to happen only long after their own expiration
 date. Hey, had they only believed in reincarnation, maybe they
 would have more concerned?

 The other aspect is the statistics. How does one relate to a
 rather small risk of a very grave catastrophe?  During the Cold
 War the risk of nuclear war was a man-made one, and the fix
 for it was a matter of sociopolitical engineering. 

 With regards to asteroids and comets we are up against Nature.
 Is Nature good or evil? Should we accept a challenge from
 almighty Nature, or just surrender in a fatalistic manner?

 Back in 1940 Winston Churchill said, "We shall never surrender."

 But just two years earlier Neville Chamberlain had said, "Peace
 in our time."

 It could take less than two years for a NEO observation to
 result in the below views of the 'mainstream asteroid-hunting
 community' to be deemed verging on criminal neglect, and to
 give cause for praise to those prescient individuals who to-day
 suffer occasional nightmares.

 [snip]

> Abstract:
> Asteroids occasionally collide with the Earth. Fortunately, large 
> impacts that would cause global catastrophe for humans occur only 
> once every few million years on average. Smaller impacts, some of 
> which could cause countrywide devastation, occur ten times more 
> frequently. Because of the great consequences of even a locally 
> destructive impact, efforts have been underway for more than a
> decade to discover as many so-called near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) as 
> possible. Reassuringly, we now know that one's chance of perishing
> in an asteroid impact is about that of dying from a venomous bite or
> a fireworks accident -- something to be mindful of but not to have 
> nightmares about. I'll describe how plans are developing to search 
> for very many more NEAs, and show you some ideas about how to prevent 
> an impact, or at least to reduce the number of casualties.

--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen
Slagelse, Denmark