| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
23 Feb 2007 11:51:53 AM |
| Object: |
AAAS |
Making an impact
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8733664
Feb 22nd 2007 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
The first of five reports from America's annual gathering of
scientists looks at the threat of being hit by an asteroid
LATE in 2004 astronomers made an alarming discovery. Initial estimates
of the orbit of an asteroid, discovered a few months earlier,
suggested that there was a 1% chance of it colliding with Earth in
2029. With further measurements this probability increased to nearly
3%. The asteroid was dubbed Apophis, the Greek name for an Egyptian
god of destruction. This seemed fitting, since the asteroid is about
250 metres across, some five times larger than the objects that
produced Meteor Crater in Arizona, roughly 50,000 years ago, and the
Tunguska event in 1908, which flattened 2,000 square kilometres of
Siberian forest. If Apophis did hit Earth, someone would get an
extremely nasty headache indeed.
The good news is that, thanks to more precise measurements, the
asteroid is no longer deemed a serious threat. It will pass within
32,000 kilometres (20,000 miles) of Earth in 2029. But studying this
near miss has concentrated the minds of researchers wonderfully. For,
small though the chance of a large asteroid hitting home might be, the
consequences would be devastating. Moreover, the danger can be averted
for a reasonably small sum, as a panel of experts concluded at this
year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, held in San Francisco.
AAAS OR "American Association for the Advancement of Science"
http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=AAAS%20OR%20%22American%20Association%20for%20the%20Advancement%20of%20Science%22&btnG=Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&q=AAAS+OR+%22American+Association+for+the+Advancement+of+Science%22&sa=N&tab=nw
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&q=AAAS%20OR%20%22American%20Association%20for%20the%20Advancement%20of%20Science%22&sa=N&tab=wb
http://www.google.com/search?q=AAAS+OR+%22American+Association+for+the+Advancement+of+Science%22&btnG=Search+Directory&hl=en&cat=gwd%2FTop
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=AAAS+OR+%22American+Association+for+the+Advancement+of+Science%22&start=0&scoring=d&num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
