PLEASE NOTE:
*
Date sent: Tue, 10
Feb 1998 09:43:29 -0500 (EST)
From:
Benny J Peiser B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject: CC
DIGEST, 10/02/98
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
CAMBRIDGE-CONFERENCE DIGEST, 10 February 1998
--------------------------------------------
(1) WHY ARE WE SHIRKING OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THE UNIVERSE?
Duncan Steel dis@a011.aone.net.au
Oliver Morton abq72@pop.dial.pipex.com
(2) RESEARCH ON ANTARCTIC METEORITES
Jim Bladen JBLADEN@us.oracle.com
(3) COMPUTER PROGRAMME FOR METEOR OBSERVATIONS
Ivan Goethals ivan@wina.student.kuleuven.ac.be
(4) "METEOROBS" - THE AMATEUR METEOR OBSERVATION
NETWORK
Lew Gramer dedalus@latrade.com
===========================================
(1) WHY ARE WE SHIRKING OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THE UNIVERSE?
From a recent discussion between Duncan Steel (Spaceguard
Australia) and Oliver Morton (science journalist, London) on the
"Third Culture" network. For further information see
the EDGE
Website ( http://www.edge.org
).
----------------------------------
From: Duncan Steel dis@a011.aone.net.au
Lewis Wolpert's question struck a chord with me:
"Why do people believe in things for which there is no
evidence and
would it be a mistake to try and persuade them not to?"
I've been engaged for some years in trying to persuade people/
governments that there is a hazard to
individuals/civilization/our
species from catastrophic impacts by asteroids and comets. But
what I
(and my colleagues in such an endeavor) meet with is a total
denial:
that there is no such hazard. Thus Wolpert's question for me has
a
corollary:
"Why do people NOT believe in things for which there IS
evidence and
is it a mistake to try and persuade them to do so?"
Evidence = e.g. impact craters on Earth & Moon, asteroids
& comets
flying by, impacts on Jupiter in 1994, geological and fossil
record,
simple sums showing that a 2 km asteroid impact would release
energy
equivalent to a million megatons of TNT, etc.
We have an awesome responsibility: so far as we know, we
inhabit the
only planet bearing life (DNA) in the universe, and we are the
only
species which can spread life/DNA throughout the galaxy. A decent
asteroid impact could put an end to that possibility, for maybe
millions of years.
Thus I have another question, which is actually more general
than
just this topic in which I am interested (the hazard from big
impacts):
"Why are we shirking our responsibility to the universe?"
Best,
Duncan
DUNCAN STEEL is a research scientist, broadcaster; author of
ROGUE
ASTEROIDS AND DOOMSDAY COMETS.
---------------
From: Oliver Morton abq72@pop.dial.pipex.com
A reply to Duncan:
Like Duncan, I've thought about this one too, though not as
much and
not necessarily in the same way. It seems to me that people shirk
responsibility when they want to deny that they have it and when
they
think they can get away with. If Duncan and his fellow travellers
fail to persuade someone to do something about it, then the
question
of whether we can get away with the denial becomes an empirical
one.
But the reasons for the denial are still interesting.
If we had the sense of deep time that Stewart Brand and Greg
Benford
asked questions about, then we'd have no trouble taking impacts
seriously (though I suppose that's not necessarily the case -- we
might take the falls of civilisations less seriously instead...).
As
an aside, it strikes me that a trivial way of increasing people's
sense of deep time would be through simulations, perhaps using
simple
screensavers, that show extremely slow processes speeded up to be
merely slow by everyday standards: glaciers at one month: one
second,
impacts at one year: one second, the hawaiian island chain at
1,000
years: one second, etc. I'd buy one.
But even without a developed sense of deep time, the belief
that
impacts actually happen is already out there. It's widely
accepted as
a truth about the world, not just by scientists, but by the
public
and by those politicians who have thought about it. When there
was an
impact report from Greenland just before Christmas it made the
news
all around the world, as did the questions of what would have
happened if it had hit a city or if the next one was bigger.
Impact
stories that put the facts more or less accurately have been on
the
cover of almost every newsmagazine and are staples of the science
pages; the spaceguard report that Duncan worked on was the
subject of
congressional hearings. Intellectually, it is an idea people can
accept. Its just that there is a huge distance between accepting
an idea intellectually and behaving accordingly -- ask anyone
who's
worked on AIDS prevention programmes.
The slight shift in relatively small patterns of technoscience
spending required to meet the threat Duncan warns of might seem
rather easier to accomplish through rational argument than a
personal
change in sexual behaviour. But political changes need
constituencies, and "people who will be harmed by an
impact" simply
do not make up an identifiable constituency, while people who
will
benefit directly from a search programme and protection
mechanisms
make up a small constituency in the already politically-very-
well-served space sector.
However, I don't think this political problem is quite the
whole
story. I think the denial is rather deeper -- and it's a denial
not
of the threat, but of our powers. I first became aware of the
impact
problem when I read Niven and Pournelles "Lucifer's
Hammer", part of
the message of which was that if the impacting comet had come a
decade or so later mankind would have just pushed it aside. When
I
came to write about the subject years later I found that this was
largely true -- the problem of finding most potential impactors
and
dealing with any direct hazards is relatively simple (though
the long period comet envisioned by N&P would be much harder
to deal
with). And now I think that that very fact contributes to the
denial.
It's not that people worry about the ability to divert asteroids
being misused in the ways that Carl Sagan warned of: its just
that
the sheer power involved seems too much. In this regard people
are
more worried about our capacity to disturb the universe than they
are
about the universe's capacity to destroy our civilisation. I
wrote
about this for The Independent in London last February -- the
piece
may still be on their website. It ended like this:
Perhaps people do not want to see themselves connected to the
universe in this sort of way. The geologists who for years
resisted
the impact explanation for the dinosaurs' death simply didn't
want
asteroids to play as big a role in the history of the earth as,
say,
the wanderings of one of its own tectonic plates. Tough: they do.
Humans and the earth they live on are linked to the universe in
all
sorts of strange, indirect, unsettling ways - and, worse yet,
humanity now has the power to change these connections. We
can empty
seas and denude vast forests, we can warm an entire planet and
now,
given just a little warning, we can push aside flying mountains.
It's
genuinely frightening to contemplate such power, especially when
you
realise how poorly decisions about using it are made or not made.
Better to deny the risk of asteroid impacts than to accept the
fact
the humans can redirect the stars in their courses. It's a
delusion,
in this case a slightly dangerous one - but you can understand
it.
Best, o
============================
(2) RESEARCH ON ANTARCTIC METEORITES
From: Jim Bladen (JBLADEN@us.oracle.com)
The following web site documents Dr. Luann Becker's Antarctica
expedition to
collect meteorites and Antarctic ice samples:
http://govt.us.oracle.com/mars
Dr. Becker will analyze the meteorites and ice, and will
compare the organic
components of each to address the origin (terrestrial or
extraterrestrial)
of the material. Part of Dr. Beckers' research involves the
assessment of
organic matter in martian meteorites. An important issue to
address in these
studies is what organic components are present in the Antarctic
environment,
and how the Antarctic weathering process affects the preservation
of organic
matter in meteorites.
Dr. Becker is an astrobiologist/geochemist with the University
of Hawaii.
Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe. This site
enables Dr.
Becker to collaborate with her peers and Mars enthusiasts
worldwide from the
field in Antarctica.
This web site is sponsored by Oracle Corporation in a
cooperative effort to
make the findings of this scientific expedition available to
interested
persons worldwide.
====================
(3) COMPUTER PROGRAMME FOR METEOR OBSERVATIONS
From: Ivan Goethals ivan@wina.student.kuleuven.ac.be
A while ago, I posted info about a program I wrote to process
meteor
observations. During the last few months, I've been
improving the
program (eg. plottings can be processed as well now), and I've
been
removing some nasty bugs.
The program (Win95/NT) is called "Meteor companion
v1.11", and is
able to process practically all meteor countings and plottings.
Using
it, I was able to reduce the time I spent processing my
observations
by at least a factor 3.
INFO
----
More info can be found at (be sure your browser supports
frames...)
http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9607566/metcomp.htm
The pictures provided at this adress belong to an older version (1.0)
PROGRAM
-------
The program itself can be downloaded at
http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9607566/metcomp1.zip
(use a program like WINZIP to unpack)
Clear skies, and... little waisted processing time,
Ivan
,---------------------------------------------------------,
| Goethals Ivan | igoe@geocities.com | Van Gorplaan
32 |
|--------------------------------------| B2580
PUTTE |
| www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9607566 |
BELGIUM |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
| Meteor companion, the easiest way to process
your |
| meteor
observations.
|
| http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9607566/metcomp.htm
|
'---------------------------------------------------------'
=================================
(4) "METEOROBS" - THE AMATEUR METEOR OBSERVATION
NETWORK
From: Lew Gramer dedalus@latrade.com
"Meteorobs" is an email mailing list devoted to all
aspects of
(primarily amateur) meteor observing: its 220+ subscribers
include
representatives from most major national and international
amateur
meteor organizations, some professional researchers, and many of
the
most experienced individual amateurs in the world!
All postings to 'meteorobs' are archived on the World Wide Web
at:
http://www.tiac.net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs
This 'meteorobs' home page now also includes a link to a
"Keyword
Search" form, which will allow you to find PARTICULAR TOPICS
anywhere
within the complete archive of nearly 7000 meteorobs postings
dating
back to early 1996. Keyword Search is available at:
http://www.tiac.net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/keysearch.html
This topic retrieval is also supported in email via MajorDomo.
It is hoped that this searchable archive can serve as a
serious
research and learning resource for the world Meteor Community. If
you
have any questions or suggestions about 'meteorobs', or would
like to
subscribe to the mailing list, please email me! There is also a
Web
form for subscribing at:
http://www.tiac.net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html
Clear skies, and many meteors!
Lew Gramer owner-meteorobs@latrade.com
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