PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 43/2003 - 28 April 2003
----------------------------------
"Those of a nervous disposition should look away now, and
not just from the rolling news channels. They would also do
well to avert their gaze from publication
lists, where books forecasting doom and gloom are vying
miserably for supremacy over those predicting Jihad, the
apocalypse or the extinction of Homo sapiens. Indeed, with the
Iraq conflict dominating the Middle East and a mystery
pneumonia virus threatening south-east Asia, I wouldn't be
surprised if an asteroid was found to be hurtling towards the
western world."
--Anjana Ahuja, The
Times, 23 April 2003
"Pessimism is good box office, and [Sir Martin] Rees's gloom
stands in a long tradition of dyspeptic futurology. From Huxley's
Brave New World and H. G. Wells to the modern environmental
movement, almost everybody has painted the future as a dismal
place, and almost everybody has - so far - been wrong. Steam
engines, nuclear war, the population explosion, chemicals, social
dislocation and genetically modified food have come and gone
without leaving us worse off: in fact, the more technology we
invent, the healthier, wealthier and wiser we become. So why
should Jeremiah Rees be right where so many past prophets have
been wrong?"
--Matt Ridley, The
Sunday Telegraph, 27 April 2003
(1) ANOTHER EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE 1972 FIREBALL?
Gary W. Kronk <kronk@amsmeteors.org>
(2) THEY SAW THE METEOR, THEN HEARD THE METEORITES
Toronto Star, 27 April 2003
(3) NEAR EARTH OBJECT INFORMATION CENTRE - ONE YEAR ON
NEOIC, 16 April 2003
(4) ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ASTEROIDS
The News Press, 25 April 2003
(5) 'BUNKER BUSTER' MISSILES AIM AT MOON
BBC News Online, 24 April 2003
(6) PROPHETS OF DOOM
The Times, 23 April 2003
(7) PROPHET OR PESSIMIST?
The Sunday Telegraph, 27 April 2003
(8) SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY MOVING OBJECT CATAOLOG
Zeljko Ivezic
<IVEZIC@ASTRO.PRINCETON.EDU>
(9) RAS/BAA PROAM MEETING
Margaret Penston <mjp@ast.cam.ac.uk>
(10) MARS FLASHES
Duncan Lunan
<astra@dlunan.freeserve.co.uk>
(11) CLARK CHAPMAN'S OECD PAPER
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
(12) AND FINALLY: SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THAT FLIES CAN FLY!
Ananova, 24 April 2003
=============
(1) ANOTHER EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE 1972 FIREBALL?
From Gary W. Kronk <kronk@amsmeteors.org>
Dear Benny,
I receive a lot of e-mail from people every year asking questions
about comets and meteors showers. Sometimes they ask questions
about things they saw the night before and sometimes they ask
about events they experienced years and even decades earlier.
On April 10 I received an e-mail giving what seemed to be a very
interesting eyewitness account of the daylight fireball of August
10, 1972. I read it over several times and noted two significant
problems with the account. First, it was made perhaps 10 or 11
hours after the appearance of the famous 1972 fireball. Second,
the observation was made in Hawaii, far enough away to make an
observation of the daylight fireball impossible even if the time
had been correct.
I wondered whether this might be a similar, but independent
event, and wrote to Duncan Steel to ask his opinion. He said it
seemed genuine and thought it might be interesting to publish the
details on an internet discussion list somewhere. Knowing the
caliber of people reading your newsletters, I thought CCNet would
be a great choice.
The observer was Gary Elliot and he was observing from Kauai. I
wrote to him and said the object he saw could not be the famous
1972 fireball, but asked for more details. This morning I
received a much longer, more complete description.
My question to him was as follows:
"I was wondering if there were any additional details you
might be able to provide, such as direction and altitude, and
maybe even a brightness estimation. For instance, you said the
observation occurred at dusk. Does this mean the evening sky was
still quite bright or were any stars visible? "
His response was as follows:
"I was standing on the bluff with four other friends after
coming out of Kalalau Valley on Kauai. I mention this because
three of them would be able to corroborate my account (one has
died).
"We first noticed what appeared as a very bright meteor
which we first noticed high in the Southern sky. It moved from
south to north from very high and descended in altitude. I am not
sure about how you measure magnitude, but it was as brilliant as
a full moon, (not as
large) if not brighter. It was a very large meteor,as compared
with an average shooting star. It did not appear to be as large
as the photograph of the Wyoming meteor, maybe half that size. Of
course there were no mountains nearby to gage it, but it was big.
"By dusk I mean that the very last, thin thread of daylight
was on the horizon, (approx. 15 minutes after sunset) and the
first stars would have already been visible, though I don't
recall paying attention to the presence of stars.
"At a certain point, perhaps after 2-3 seconds of the meteor
getting brighter and brighter white, It appeared to burst into a
brilliant emerald green color. This was the most striking part of
the event. The color was so intensely green. It plummeted, and
then the green color diminished to an apparent fireball of
orange-red with a vapor trail behind it. Pieces began to break
apart. It was visible for a second or two, as what appeared to be
a falling rock-like object. Then there was a "whoosh"
sound in the distance followed by a brief roll of what sounded
like distant thunder. From start to finish the event lasted 15-20
seconds.
"I can only tell you that it was such an intense experience
that we were all pretty dumbstruck. When I told people on Kauai
about what we had seen, some said that it was probably a missile
launch or something from Barking Sands Missile Range on Kauai. I
called and made several inquiries and no one could confirm that
there was any testing that day. I grew up in California and am
familiar with missile launches from Vandenberg. In my opinion
this was not a missile launch because the trajectory was clearly
entering not departing Earth's atmosphere.
"Some time after the sighting on Aug 10th (again, I remember
the date because it is my Mom's birthday) I heard of the Wyoming
sighting, and have sometimes wondered whether there could be any
connection. Obviously the time difference would not allow it to
be the same object, but it is interesting to note."
I am hoping that the publication of this observation might
intrigue some readers to seek out additional observations of this
object. Ultimately it would be nice to know if this object was
somehow associated with the daylight fireball that occurred 10 to
11 hours earlier.
Gary W. Kronk
============
(2) THEY SAW THE METEOR, THEN HEARD THE METEORITES
From Toronto Star, 27 April 2003
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1051125568292&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
TERENCE DICKINSON
THE UNIVERSE
A few minutes before midnight on March 26, a 20-tonne chunk of
rock from the asteroid belt plunged into the Earth's atmosphere
and broke apart with explosive force above the Chicago suburb of
Park Forest, where those who didn't see the fiery visitor flash
across the sky probably were awakened by the thunderous boom of
the break-up detonation.
Soon after the blast, residents heard the bangs of falling pieces
of rock as hundreds of bits of the exploded meteorite rained down
on roofs, roads and cars. One softball-sized chunk crashed
through a roof and kitchen floor before coming to rest on a table
in the basement. Another roof-penetrating piece narrowly missed a
sleeping teenager.
The original object, about the size of a car, fragmented into
these small pieces because the denser layers of the atmosphere
act like a solid wall to an object moving at several kilometres
per second. The result: an explosive breakup.
"Meteoroids this size hit the Earth about half a dozen times
per year, but rarely over thickly settled areas," says
University of Western Ontario meteor expert Peter Brown.
He says they always break up the way this one did, but the pieces
are rarely recovered because most fall over the ocean or
unpopulated areas.
In fact, this was the first recorded occurrence of hundreds of
meteorite fragments falling on a major urban area. Surprisingly,
although several people have been conked by meteorites, no one in
recorded history has been killed or seriously injured.
But the idea that rocks from deep space do indeed fall to Earth
is enough to fire the imagination.
Whenever a meteorite is recovered, you are sure to see incorrect
statements about it in the news media.
Much of the confusion stems from the vocabulary astronomers use
in this field. For example, a meteor is the streak of light in
the sky caused by the incineration of a meteoroid, which is the
actual object in space. A bright meteor that appears to break up
is called a bolide, but if any of it reaches the ground, it is
called a meteorite.
A scientist who studies meteors and meteorites is usually called
a meteor expert, not a meteorologist, who is a trained weather
forecaster.
No wonder almost everyone apart from astronomers and
professionals in the field of meteoritics gets confused.
A related point of confusion for the general public is the
non-relationship between a meteor shower and the fall of a
meteorite.
In a typical wire-service story, you will read something like
this: "The baseball-sized rock from space that landed in the
Pleasantville Supersize Mart parking lot yesterday may have been
from the Perseid meteor shower that peaked last Tuesday."
The fact is (and just to confuse the issue further), meteors from
predictable meteor showers, such as the Perseids and Leonids,
consist of comet dust that incinerates in the atmosphere far
above the Earth's surface. Comets have nothing to do with the
asteroid belt, which is where rocky meteorites originate.
Got all that?
Copyright 2003, Toronto Star
=============
(3) NEAR EARTH OBJECT INFORMATION CENTRE - ONE YEAR ON
From NEOIC, 16 April 2003
http://www.nearearthobjects.co.uk/news_display.cfm?code=news_intro&itemID=172
Twelve months ago saw the opening day with journalists and
members of the NEO community descending on the Millennium
Commission funded landmark attraction. The launch date of 20
April was chosen to coincide with the 126th anniversary of the
Rowton meteorite fall, the UK's only iron meteorite. Among the
guest speakers were Dr Colin Hicks, the Director General of the
BNSC and Dr Harry Atkinson, chairman of the NEO Task Force.
In addition to the physical centres at the Space Centre in
Leicester, W5 Belfast, Royal Observatory Edinburgh and Natural
History Museum London, the NEOIC also has a presence on the web
at www.nearearthobjects.co.uk. The site includes a virtual
exhibition and a variety of interactive elements, including
Virtual Orbits and the NEO Movie. With over 130,000 hits since
its launch, the website is proving very popular with those
interested in NEO issues. "It is interesting to observe the
site statistics soar whenever an NEO story is in the news,"
said Kevin Yates, Project Manager for the NEOIC. "It is
encouraging that both the public and the media see us as a
reliable source of information".
The first year of operation has also seen a significant amount of
outreach activity, as NEOIC representatives have travelled around
the country to present talks and workshops. Over 5,000 people
have now experienced the 'Earth Under Threat' presentation. This
involves seeing a comet nucleus being made with ingredients like
water, carbon, and dry ice, and an opportunity to 'Touch a Space
Rock' in the meteorite encounter. Young and old alike are amazed
at being given the chance to actually hold one of these 4.5
billion year old leftovers from the formation of our Solar
System.
As well as exciting people about the science behind NEO research,
the centre aims to reassure the public by giving them access to
the latest information in a none sensationalised way. "I'm
always disturbed to hear young children telling me the Earth is
going to be destroyed by an asteroid in 2019 or 2022," said
Kevin Yates, "the children hear these reports and it sticks
with them. It is nice to have the opportunity to put the record
straight, and explain why the assessment of risk changes as
astronomers are given time to make more observations."
Another major part of the project has been the opening of the NEO
exhibition at the National Space Centre. The exhibition includes
IT and physical interactives designed to make some of the complex
issues understandable to a family audience. One of the exhibits,
called 'Be a Meteorite Hunter' gives visitors the chance to
identify a meteorite among a selection of terrestrial rocks. The
Earth's cratering record, as well as the need to track NEOs after
their discovery, are presented in the form of computer
interactives.
Elements of the exhibition will be installed in the Belfast,
London and Edinburgh centres before the autumn. Dan Hillier,
Manager for the Royal Observatory Edinburgh Visitor Centre, said
"I was really delighted when I first saw the quality of the
NEOIC's 'Earth Under Threat' presentation. We are really looking
forward to an exhibition of similar quality. We have been running
NEO sessions for nearly six months now and they have become a
very popular and effective part of our public events, outreach
and teacher training sessions."
Over the Easter weekend (19-20 April 2003) the NEOIC will be
hosting an egg-travaganza birthday weekend at the National Space
Centre. The event includes free activities such as the brand new
"Exploding Asteroid" demonstration, comet building, NEO
family space missions, an Easter egg hunt, competitions, and lots
of fun for all the family.
=============
(4) ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ASTEROIDS
From The News Press, 25 April 2003
http://www.news-press.com/news/local_state/030424observe.html
Professor tries to prevent objects from ending life
By KEVIN LOLLAR, klollar@news-press.com
Sounds distinctly scientific and not a little ominous:
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids Supplemental Observation and
Recovery, or PHASOR.
"Set your PHASORS on stun," says Michael Fauerbach, the
man behind a local effort that could someday save the human race.
Sure, it's a long shot, but it is a very real possibility:
Mankind just might be wiped out some day by an asteroid.
What Fauerbach, an assistant professor of physics at Florida Gulf
Coast University, and his colleagues are doing at the Evelyn L.
Egan Observatory to prevent such a cataclysm is gathering data on
Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs.
A summary of the FGCU team's work will be on display Friday
during the university's second annual Research Day.
Although the FGCU team is concentrating on asteroids, NEOs
include comets. The defining factor is that the object must pass
within 28 million miles of Earth.
Fauerbach photographs NEOs that have been discovered by others
and sends the findings to the Minor Planet Center at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Institute of Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
There, scientists compare the data to other observations, plot
each NEO's orbit and determine which ones will slam like a
celestial sledgehammer into the Earth.
"Always remember why we don't have any dinosaurs,"
Fauerbach said. "People forget that 65 million years ago,
not far from here, in the Yucatan, an impact killed 75 percent of
all living species.
"I don't want to panic people, but we do have to be
concerned. Asteroids are natural disasters like tornadoes and
hurricanes, and we have to be dedicated to that."
NASA is dedicated enough that it has set up a program to discover
90 percent of NEOs that are
1 kilometer (0.62 miles) in diameter by 2008.
"The reason they cut it off at 1 kilometer: anything larger,
and we don't have to worry about the stock market anymore,"
Fauerbach said. "It would be the end of civilization as we
know it."
Fauerbach and the Minor Planet Center people also are interested
in smaller NEOs, particularly Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
(PHAs), which are at least 150 meters in diameter and whose
closest approach to Earth is less than 4.6 million miles.
At this point, 506 PHAs have been discovered.
"Some of these things are only the size of football fields,
but if one hit, we wouldn't have to worry about Miami
anymore," Fauerbach said. "It would take out smaller
areas, unless it hit water and caused a tsunami. Think what such
a wave could do to Florida."
Egan Observatory is an important part of the international NEO
search because, at 26.5 degrees north latitude, it houses the
southernmost state-of-the-art telescope in the continental United
States. It can, therefore, search parts of the sky that other
U.S. and European telescopes can't see.
To do their part in protecting mankind from asteroids, the FGCU
team uses what Fauerbach calls "the sexiest telescope you'll
ever see" - a $40,000 16-inch Ritchey-Chretien (the same
design as the Hubble Space Telescope, only smaller) on a
computerized mount that can be run from the comfort of the
observatory's office.
"This is an experience you couldn't get anywhere else,"
said Stephan Schonberg, graduate student and part-time
observatory staffer. "Working on potentially hazardous
asteroids with this kind of equipment and getting results is
awesome."
So, what if astronomers determine that an asteroid is on a
sledgehammer course Earth-ward?
"If we have 10 years' notice, we'll be able to defend
Earth," Fauerbach said. "If it's short notice, no way.
"Asteroids come in different flavors. Some are big rocks,
and if you nuke them, they'll break up, and, instead of one, you
have many hitting us. Some are piles of rubble, barely held
together. It would be like hitting a sand bag: It would deform
and still hit us. All you really need to do is nudge an asteroid
slightly and it will miss us by millions of miles."
Asteroid and comet impacts are inevitable. Scientists expect a
1-kilometer object to strike Earth every few million years; for a
100-meter object, the expectation is about once a century - the
last such impact occurred in 1908 when a 75-meter object exploded
over Tunguska in Siberia and flattened 800 square miles of
forest.
"Yes, an impact is a natural disaster, probably one of the
few natural disasters we can do something about," Fauerbach
said. "The question is how much money do we want to
spend?"
Copyright 2003, The News Press
============
(5) 'BUNKER BUSTER' MISSILES AIM AT MOON
From BBC News Online, 24 April 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2970205.stm
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Tests have been carried out on ground penetrating missiles using
'bunker buster' technology that could be fired into the depths of
dark lunar craters to look for ice.
The proposed mission is called Polar Night, a lunar orbiter that
would fire instrumented missiles towards the surface of the Moon.
Tests performed recently in New Mexico have shown that scientific
equipment could survive the rapid deceleration of striking the
ground and being buried a few metres beneath the surface of the
Moon.
The researchers hope that Nasa will approve their mission early
next year for a 2007 launch.
Shock testing
The impetus behind these tests is that for many decades
scientists have speculated about the possibility of ice at the
lunar poles having accumulated there over geologically long
periods of time.
Into the plywood
The ice would be from impacting comets. If some of the ice from
the comets found its way into dark lunar polar craters where the
Sun never reaches, it could be trapped for billions of years.
The lunar polar ice hypothesis was finally confirmed by
observations made by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1998.
Technically, the Lunar Prospector data is compelling evidence for
the presence of hydrogen. However, most scientists are convinced
a small amount of water ice is present at the lunar poles, though
other hypotheses exist.
Because of the scientific attraction of lunar polar exploration
the University of Hawaii, with engineers and scientists from the
US Naval Research Laboratory, Utah State University, the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia
National Laboratory are proposing an adventurous mission called
Polar Night.
"Polar Night would conduct a highly detailed remote sensing
survey of the poles to refine our understanding of the
temperatures and distribution of hydrogen, then directly sample
the polar ice with three hard-landing probes," Professor
Paul Lucey of the University of Hawaii told BBC News Online.
"The probes are based on bunker-buster penetrators, but
instead of explosives, would carry sophisticated scientific
instruments hardened against the shock of striking the lunar
surface."
"The instruments were recently shock tested in the New
Mexico desert by firing them at high speed into 2 metres (6 feet)
of plywood, where they experienced 1200 G's of shock and worked
perfectly afterwards."
New questions
According to Professor Lucey the existence of lunar polar ice
raises a new set of questions.
What is the nature of the deposit?
What is the source of the water?
Are other ices besides water ice present?
Is the hydrogen actually in the form of water ice, or is it
hydrogen from the solar wind?
He told BBC News Online, "The lunar poles are a potential
science bonanza, possibly having recorded the volatile history of
the solar system for 2 billion years."
"That potential has an analogy with the poles of the Earth,
where meteorites are routinely preserved by the Antarctic icecap
and collected by scientists. There is a nice symmetry here: on
the Earth, the ice of the poles collects rocks from space, while
on the Moon, the rocks of the poles collect ices from
space."
Easily collectable ice at the lunar poles could also transform
the economics of space exploration.
"For resources for future space travel the chemical form and
concentration are clearly relevant to the economic value of these
deposits, regardless of our current ignorance of the economics of
the future," says Professor Lucey.
The scientists hope the mission will be funded by Nasa's
Discovery program of moderate cost planetary science missions.
Lunar Prospector was a mission in this series, and the current
missions in flight are Genesis, returning a sample of the solar
wind, and Stardust to return cometary and interstellar dust.
The proposals for the next round of the Discovery Missions
Program are due later this year with the selection of the 3-5
finalists taking place a few months later.
If Polar Night survives the proposal process, the first impacts
would occur in 2007.
Copyright 2003, BBC
=============
(6) PROPHETS OF DOOM
From The Times, 23 April 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,1,00.html
The new scientific guides to the end of the world make grim
reading, but don't scare Anjana Ahuja
Those of a nervous disposition should look away now, and not just
from the rolling news channels. They would also do well to avert
their gaze from publication lists, where books forecasting doom
and gloom are vying miserably for supremacy over those predicting
Jihad, the apocalypse or the extinction of Homo sapiens.
Indeed, with the Iraq conflict dominating the Middle East and a
mystery pneumonia virus threatening south-east Asia, I wouldn't
be surprised if an asteroid was found to be hurtling towards the
western world. Hello, what's this in my inbox? Why, it's a media
missive from the Royal Astronomical Society informing me that
since its formation over four billion years ago, "planet
Earth has resembled a giant bulls-eye in space, a target for
asteroids and comets of all shapes and sizes", and would I
like to attend a conference discussing this cheery proposition?
It's a good job I'm a glass-half-full kinda gal.
Scientists have the edge when it comes to discussing the bumping
off of humanity, for good reason. They have the expertise to
hasten it (nuclear bombs) and stop it (vaccines). But I am still
somewhat alarmed to see Professor Sir Martin Rees, the calm and
reasonable Cambridge University cosmologist, muttering
apocalyptically in his latest book, Our Final Century (Heinemann,
Pounds 17.99; offer, Pounds 14.39).
The book is subtitled with fence-sitting aplomb: Will the Human
Race Survive the Twenty-first Century? Even though he's keeping
his options open, Rees has still bet a thousand dollars that by
the year 2020, one biological disaster will have claimed at least
a million lives. The former Astronomer Royal also believes we
should colonise at least one other planet to "safeguard
against the worst possible disaster -the foreclosure of
intelligent life's future through the extinction of all
humankind".
This slim but grim homage to pessimism rather cleverly appeals to
different strands of the bookbuying public. Conventional science
book aficionados will buy it because Rees, while outside his
specialism, is a name. For science virgins desperate not to
remain so, it is a useful round-up of the latest technology and
science in which global danger could possibly lurk (global
disease pandemics, environmental change).
And, of course, it will attract the End is Nigh brigade. Their
outdated sandwich boards no longer look in danger of congealing
-plenty of heavyweights have come round to their depressing way
of thinking. This month also saw the paperback publication of A
Guide to the End of the World, by Bill McGuire, a professor of
"geophysical hazards" at University College, London
(Oxford University Press, Pounds 11.99; offer, Pounds 9.59).
McGuire focuses on natural perils, such as asteroid impacts,
deadly volcanic eruptions and killer tsunamis, which suggest to
him that planet Earth is "an extraordinarily fragile place
that is fraught with danger".
As Rees puts it, with cutting politeness: "Although he
(McGuire) might make it sound scary, the threat of natural
disasters doesn't keep us awake at night any more than it did our
ancestors. In my view the most serious ones are human induced
threats, which are getting worse." And so Rees carries on a
fine publishing tradition of scaring the reader witless, which
started with such books as Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague
(Penguin, Pounds 13.99; offer, Pounds 11.19) and Richard
Preston's The Hot Zone (Corgi, Pounds 5.99; offer, Pounds 5.09),
which both explored biological threats. More recent offerings
include Russian-defector-turned-grass Ken Alibek's Biohazard
(Arrow, Pounds 6.99; offer, Pounds 5.94), the creepy tale of his
former country's covert weapons programme, and Dorothy Crawford's
The Invisible Enemy: A Natural History of Viruses (Oxford
University Press, Pounds 8.99; offer, Pounds 7.64), a rather more
scholarly portrait of gloom.
Rees puts our odds of surviving to the end of this century at
only fifty fifty.
"You'd have to be a real optimist to put our chances at
better than that," Rees tells me brightly. "Twenty or
thirty years ago, a prudent person would have said there was a 30
per cent chance of 500 million people being killed by nuclear
weapons. It didn't happen, but the odds were better than even
that we'd survive.
"That threat may have diminished but it hasn't gone away.
And now we have a greater variety of threats. We just have to
accept that we're going to be more vulnerable. Individuals have
more power and the world is more interconnected."
Thanks to the internet, scientific knowledge travels around the
globe quickly, and it can occasionally stray into the wrong hands
(interestingly, science journals are currently debating whether
the cherished norm of completely open publication should continue
to apply to sensitive research). Imagine, Rees says, a demented
individual who could design and unleash a deadly, infective
biological organism into the community. Rees writes: "An
organised network of al-Qaeda-type terrorists would not be
required; just a fanatic or social misfit with the mindset of
those who now design computer viruses. There are people with such
propensities in every country -very few, to be sure, but bio-and
cyber-technologies will become so powerful that even one could be
well too many."
It matters not whether a calamitous event is perpetrated by error
or terror. In a world characterised by increasing technical
know-how but with growing disenfranchisement, Rees says, both
risks are swollen. However, pinning down which dangers will be
the greatest, Rees says, is impossible, because scientific
progress is so fast. That makes predictions for a hundred years
hence "absurd".
Rees says: "We know how unpredictable the past 20 years have
been, so I wouldn't want to guess." He believes in making
the disenchanted less so, but appreciates this is a political
problem. He also adds, quite rightly, that the revolution in
genetics means we will soon be able to alter ourselves, which
moves the goalposts yet again. Who knows what species we will
become in a century, or how self-destructive we will have grown?
Much as I admire the eloquence of Rees' glum reckoning, I'm a
little circumspect myself. First, I believe scientists are not as
gung-ho as Rees implies, and do not gloss over the moral issues
and hazards of their work. Second, whether or not by the skin of
our teeth, we did survive the nuclear age. Viruses may evolve but
so does our medical knowledge. We have conquered smallpox and, I
reassure myself, the awesome combined might of the top ten public
health laboratories in the world will soon contain Sars, the
pneumonia virus terrorising Asia. The Millennium bug was supposed
to do us in, but we pulled through. The human race is incredibly
smart -we have developed education, medicine, sanitation and
technology. Throughout history, our species has generally trodden
the route towards self-preservation. I don't have any reason to
believe we have suddenly changed, even though we are more
scientifically and technologically empowered than ever before.
But, as I said, I'm a glass-half-full kinda gal. If you don't
share my optimism, Ladbroke's is offering odds of a million to
one on the world ending within a century. That's better, then,
than the Lotto, although how you claim the winnings beats me.
Copyright 2003. Times Newspapers Ltd
=============
(7) PROPHET OR PESSIMIST?
From The Sunday Telegraph, 27 April 2003
This assessment of humankind's survival chances is over-gloomy,
says Matt Ridley
Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty First
Century? by Martin Rees Heinemann, pounds 17.99, 228 pp pounds
15.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222
SIR MARTIN REES, the Astronomer Royal, is a worried man. He fears
that our species cannot survive the present century, so great are
the legions of things that might go wrong. He imagines an
extraterrestrial watching our solar system for aeons and
witnessing a sudden spasm of activity as humanity begins to emit
radio waves and send vessels into space. "If they continue
to watch, what might these hypothetical aliens witness in the
next 100 years? Will a final squeal be followed by silence?"
Pessimism is good box office, and Rees's gloom stands in a long
tradition of dyspeptic futurology. From Huxley's Brave New World
and H. G. Wells to the modern environmental movement, almost
everybody has painted the future as a dismal place, and almost
everybody has - so far - been wrong. Steam engines, nuclear war,
the population explosion, chemicals, social dislocation and
genetically modified food have come and gone without leaving us
worse off: in fact, the more technology we invent, the healthier,
wealthier and wiser we become. So why should Jeremiah Rees be
right where so many past prophets have been wrong?
He begins by arguing that we survived nuclear annihilation by a
much slimmer margin than we realised. He goes on to suggest that
the latest technologies threaten Armageddon rather than just
misery. The most fashionable of these is nanotechnology, which
the Green movement has identified, with a little help from
Michael Crichton, as their new milch cow. The nanotech fear is
that a miniature robot designed to replicate itself will take
over the world as if it were a virus and leave us with nothing to
eat but a sort of grey goo. This is of course conceivable, just
as it is conceivable that the chemical industry will tomorrow
invent a kind of ice that turns all water into itself, or the
nuclear industry will invent a bomb hot enough to ignite the
atmosphere's nitrogen.
But all sorts of things are conceivable without being plausible
or even possible. It was conceivable that the invention of fire
by Stone Age man would lead to disaster for our species. The
grey-goo scenario has difficulty in explaining why mother Nature,
with a massive research budget and four billion years of
practice, has not yet come up with a self-replicating technology
to oust her original one - life. The answer, presumably, is that
self-replicating systems are inefficient and vulnerable in their
early aeons, so only one survives.
Rees then raises a fresh fear, that particle accelerators might
make something called a "strangelet", which in the
right conditions could "transform the entire planet Earth
into an inert hyperdense sphere about 100 metres across".
Fortunately the risk of this happening seems to be zero, but the
impact would be so great that it seems worth being cautious. As
Rees puts it, "How should society guard against being
unknowingly exposed to a not-quite-zero risk of an event with an
almost infinite downside?" Rees is at his most learned and
fluent when discussing these risk calculations.
He writes with rare clarity and conciseness: his discussion of
the Carter-Gott calculations, for instance, is a model of
incisive logic. Their argument goes that we are unlikely to
encounter a phenomenon right at the beginning or end of a long
existence, but roughly half way through. Most West-End plays
playing at any particular date are either roughly half way
through a very long run measured in years, or half way through a
very short run measured in days.
The phenomenon of human superabundance - which began just a few
centuries ago - is therefore unlikely to last for many tens of
thousands of years, but will probably last only a few centuries.
Rees finds the logic hard to swallow, but harder still to refute,
and it seems to give a mathematical turn to his pessimism. He is,
as a consequence, eloquently frightening that the end is nigh.
Yet I did not find myself in sympathy with his caution about
science, because he seems to me to omit the greatest risk of all:
the risk of doing nothing.
There is undoubtedly a risk in innovation but there is also risk
in a lack of innovation, and stopping all invention at any point
in our previous history would have resulted in humanitarian and
ecological catastrophes on a vast scale. Consider what would have
happened, for instance, if we had somehow waved a magic wand and
prevented the invention of agriculture. Evidence suggests that
increasingly efficient hunter-gatherers would have continued
their extinction of prey species - they had already devastated
the fauna of Australia, the Americas and many islands - stopping
only when the last tree in the last rain forest was felled.
Rees admits in passing that "the most dramatic engines of
current economic growth - miniaturisation and information
technology - are environmentally benign", but then fails to
follow this thought. Our Final Century is an enjoyable read, but
I prophesy that it will prove poor prophecy. If I am wrong, Rees
will not be there to say, nor will I be there to hear, "I
told you so."
Matt Ridley's `Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience and What
Makes us Human' is published by Fourth Estate.
Copyright 2003, The Sunday Telegraph
==========
(8) SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY MOVING OBJECT CATAOLOG
From Zeljko Ivezic <IVEZIC@ASTRO.PRINCETON.EDU>
Dear Benny,
please would you be so kind to post the following
announcement to the CCNet?
Thank you very much in advance,
Zeljko Ivezic
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The 2nd Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object
Catalog
We announce the second public release of the SDSS Moving Object
Catalog, with SDSS observations for 134,335 asteroids. The
catalog lists astrometric and multi-color photometric data for
moving objects observed prior to March 11, 2003, and also
includes orbital elements for 26,847 previously known objects.
The catalog is available at
http://www.sdss.org/science/index.html
as "SDSS Moving Object Catalog".
Zeljko Ivezic, Mario Juric, Robert H. Lupton (Princeton
University)
for the SDSS Collaboration
===========
(9) RAS/BAA PRO-AM MEETING
From Margaret Penston <mjp@ast.cam.ac.uk>
REMINDER - RAS/BAA ProAm meeting on Comets, Meteors and
Meteorites
Saturday May 10, 10.30-17.30
Berrill Lecture Theatre, Open University, Milton Keynes
The organisers are getting concerned that not many people have
said they will attend. Although there is no registration fee we
need to give approximate numbers to the caterers, so please email
Jonathan Shanklin <jdsh@bas.ac.uk> or Margaret Penston
<mjp@ast.cam.ac.uk> if you plan to come to the meeting.
See the website http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jds/proam.htm for programme details. This includes the George Alcock
Memorial Lecture to be given by Brian Marsden (SAO) on
"Comets near the Sun".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Margaret Penston
Tel: 01223-766655 (with voice-mail)
Institute of
Astronomy
Fax: 01223-337501
Madingley Road
Cambridge CB3 0HA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(10) MARS FLASHES
From Duncan Lunan <astra@dlunan.freeserve.co.uk>
Dear Benny,
Saheki's 1951 observation of a flash on Mars was discussed by
Patrick Moore in "Guide to Mars" (Muller, 1956).
He quotes Saheki in slightly different words and with some more
information: "'When I first looked at Mars some
minutes before 21 hours 0 minutes, I saw Tithonius Lacus just
inside the east limb. Very soon afterwards, a very small and
extremely brilliant spot became visible at the east end of this
marking. At first I could not believe my eyes, because the
appearance was so completely unexpected... More careful
examination revealed that it was not an illusion, but was a true
phenomenon on Mars.' (T. Saheki, 'Some Recent Curious Phenomena
on Mars', The Strolling Astronomer, Vol. 6, 1952, page 48).
Subsequently it became brighter than the north polar cap, and
then increased in size and faded, finally vanishing completely in
less than an hour.
"It was suggested that the flare was due to the eruption of
a Martian volcano. Less likely theories were put forward in the
daily Press as soon as the report reached Europe - one famous
London daily telephoned me to ask my views about 'the atomic bomb
that had gone off on Mars', and the landing of a giant meteor was
also suggested. Before long the Flying Saucerers seized hold of
the report, and it was referred to by D. Keyhoe in one of the
'little men from Mars' books published during 1954! However, it
seems that even the volcano theory is dubious, while the rest are
arrant nonsense. In all probability the spot was due to nothing
more vital than an unusual cloud."
However, it seems to have been a lot brighter than apparent cloud
sightings reported by Camille Flammarion in "Dreams of an
Astronomer" (trans. E.E. Fournier D'Albe, D. Appleton and
Company, New York, 1923). "One of the most curious
observations which have been made on this neighbouring planet, or
rather which have, apart from the canals, attracted the greatest
attention, is that of the luminous flashes. It has been said that
these flashes are all seen at the edge of the disc, or beyond it.
This is not correct; they show themselves on the line which
separates the hemisphere illuminated by the Sun from the dark
hemisphere - the line called the
"terminator". They are only seen when the
globe of Mars offers a sensible phase, and only along the line of
that terminator.
"The phenomenon is a slight projection, swelling, or
puffing-up of the terminator. It is not a more extraordinary
observation than that of the irregularities in the lunar diameter
at certain phases: the Sun illuminates, either before its rising
or before its setting, the summits of mountains whose bases are
still in darkness, and such summits sometimes appear on the Moon
as luminous points detached from the disc. Some fertile
imaginations have interpreted these flashes as forests on fire or
as signals sent out by the Martians. This is going too far. But
the possibility of the population of Mars by a human species more
intelligent than ours is quite a natural conclusion from the
observations. One may also guess without scientific heresy that
the canals of Mars are rivers straightened with a deliberate
intention of distributing water which has become a rarity over
that planet. The astronomers who deny these possibilities show a
very poor spirit. But, on the other hand, there is no reason to
see nothing on that world but human activity. Among several
explanations of observed phenomena one must always prefer the
simplest. In the case of luminous flashes on the
terminator, the illumination of mountain-tops or clouds by the
Sun suffices to account for them.
"Doubts were raised concerning this explanation by the
height of 260,000 feet found by an astronomer for the elevation
of these mountains. I went over the calculation and found only
15,000 feet. These mountains would not therefore be higher than
Mont Blanc, and perhaps less. We should also remember
that these luminous projections appear every time that the planet
returns to the same condition of illumination with regard to the
Earth. They were observed in 1890, 1892, 1894, 1899, 1907, 1909,
1911, 1913, etc. The regions where they appear are a sort of
island called Noachis, another called Hesperia, and a third
called Tempe. According to all appearances, we have to do with
high mountains covered with snow and with still higher
clouds."
There are in fact no mountains at those locations, though as we
know there are much higher ones elsewhere on Mars.
But if Flammarion's 'flashes' were clouds, then Saheki's would
seem to have been rather different.
Best wishes,
Duncan
=============
(11) CLARK CHAPMAN'S OECD PAPER
From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
Dear Benny
It seems that the link to the OECD website that I provided
earlier no longer works. Clark has made DOC and PPT versions
available on his website:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/clark/oecdjans.doc (short version)
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/clark/oecdjanf.doc (full version)
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/clark/OECD03.ppt (PowerPoint presentation)
Also I have put a PDF copy on my website: http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/horsts/chapman4oecd.pdf
It is recommended reading for all CCNet subscribers.
regards
Michael Paine
PS I am back from an Easter break and will update my NEO news
items at http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/horsts/spacegd.html later today.
=============
(12) AND FINALLY: SCIENTISTS DISCOVER THAT FLIES CAN FLY!
From Ananova, 24 April 2003
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_773078.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery
Scientists in Switzerland have finally confirmed that flies can
actually fly.
Previously scientists thought that their light weight allowed
flies to technically "swim" in the air.
But a study conducted in Zurich shows that friction, assumed to
let flies swim in air, isn't a factor.
Instead, inertia is the main physical influence in keeping them
up in the air.
For the study, drosophila flies were filmed using three cameras
at 5,000 pictures per second.
An analysis of the recordings showed that instead of swimming on
air, flies actively use their wings in a series of steering and
countersteering movements.
The study was conducted at Zurich University's institute of
neuro-informatics.
Copyright 2003, Ananova
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