Word: 1996ja1
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...SPACE, June 3], you noted that our planet narrowly escaped a devastating collision with a mountain-size asteroid, but you didn't portray the destruction in terms most people can comprehend. Two-thirds of the large asteroids heading toward Earth would strike oceans, not land. Had asteroid 1996JA1 collided with any of our oceans, a tidal wave of Noachian-flood proportions would have deluged every province of the planet. The survivors, should there have been any, wouldn't know what had happened. Perhaps they would refer to an act of God that cleansed the planet of a sordid past. Thank...
...many astronomers, last week's near-miss of asteroid 1996JA1, as it has been officially designated, was a kind of warning shot across Earth's bow. They have been trying to convince the world--with only modest success--that asteroids like this one represent a clear and present danger. To meet that threat, they have proposed a network of computer-monitored telescopes (equipped with sensitive electronic cameras) that would seek out threatening asteroids or comets in plenty of time to fend them off with appropriately designed long-range missiles...
...also worth pointing out that 1996JA1 is hardly unique. Neighboring space teems with many more so-called Near Earth Objects, asteroids and comets with orbits that pass close to Earth's path around the sun. More than 100 NEOS big enough to cause the kind of worldwide disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs (six-tenths of a mile across or larger) have already been identified and charted. But Eleanor Helin, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, notes that an estimated 2,000 more of these mountain-size hulks may be lurking undetected out there...
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