Word: asteroidal
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...senior science correspondent, has just finished a book on El Nino, so she was the ideal choice to write "Will We Control the Weather?" Leon Jaroff, who used to do Phil's job as science editor before becoming the founding editor of Discover magazine, wrote "Will a Killer Asteroid Hit the Earth?" (Leon is such a firm believer in this danger that the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid after him.) David Bjerklie and Unmesh Kher made sure the answers really were as smart as they seem. We were also fortunate to enlist Timothy Ferris (author of The Whole Shebang...
This reaction, while not uncommon, is not realistic given the history of serious collisions, says Jaroff, and the possibility of future events. "We now have a catalog of 200-odd asteroids more than a kilometer across whose trajectories bring them very close to Earth's orbit. A piece of rock that's a kilometer or larger would have worldwide consequences if it hit the planet." Specifically, the sky would go dark with ash, plant life would die and existence would be generally much less enjoyable. And even if a relatively small asteroid were to make contact with a major metropolitan...
...most famous example of rock-on-rock catastrophe, the Earth was slammed 65 million years ago by a massive rock formation that created an enormous crater in the Yucatan Peninsula and probably caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Everyone recognizes the devastating effect of the dino-death asteroid, Jaroff points out, but many people are still hesitant to assign any real significance to asteroid studies. "The scientists who began looking for information back in the 1970s were hamstrung by a general lack of funding. They were greeted in Congress by giggles...
...force of these grim tidings is tempered by the knowledge that U.S. government agencies have been working alongside the country's most prestigious research facilities to conjure up ways of dealing with these hurtling rocks should an asteroid ever establish itself as a threat. "Once they've identified the asteroid," Jaroff says, "scientists can predict years, even decades ahead of time whether it will intersect the Earth's orbit at a moment when the Earth is there." And should scientists discover such a scenario looming on the horizon, Jaroff says there are many ways to engage, deflect or destroy...
This is a case where the public and scientists search for a state of mind that eschews panic but retains its focus. The chance of a truly devastating asteroid hitting the Earth is "small but real," says TIME science writer Jeffrey Kluger. "But let's face it," he adds, "it's like a big billiard table out there," with rocks and planets and moons zipping around each other in space. Some folks may never admit that there is any risk, and reject the need for taxpayer-funded research: Even after the widespread success of the summer disaster movies, "Armageddon" (which...