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...your article "A Shot Across Earth's Bow" [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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Letters, Jun. 24, 1996 | 6/24/1996 | See Source »

Many people--including some astronomers--are understandably nervous about putting a standby squadron of nuclear-tipped missiles in place. Hence the latest strategy, which in some cases would obviate the need for a nuclear defense: propelling a fusillade of cannonball-size steel spheres at an approaching asteroid. In a high-velocity encounter with a speeding NEO, explains Gregory Canavan, a senior scientist at Los Alamos, "the kinetic energy of the balls would change into heat energy and blow the thing apart...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A SHOT ACROSS THE EARTH'S BOW | 6/3/1996 | See Source »

Duncan Steel, an Australian astronomer, has calculated that if the asteroid had struck Earth, it would have hit at some 58,000 m.p.h. The resulting explosion, scientists estimate, would have been in the 3,000-to-12,000-megaton range. That, says astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneer asteroid and comet hunter, "is like taking all of the U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons, putting them in one pile and blowing them...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A SHOT ACROSS THE EARTH'S BOW | 6/3/1996 | See Source »

...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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A SHOT ACROSS THE EARTH'S BOW | 6/3/1996 | See Source »

...Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories have devised a number of ingenious plans that, given enough warning time, could protect Earth from a threatening NEO. Their defensive weapons of choice include long-distance missiles with conventional or, more likely, nuclear warheads that could be used either to nudge an asteroid into a safe orbit or blast it to smithereens...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: A SHOT ACROSS THE EARTH'S BOW | 6/3/1996 | See Source »

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