PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 71/2002 - 21 June 2002
----------------------------
"Looking statistically at the asteroid population, maybe 50
times a
year a 100-meter-class asteroid passes within a lunar distance of
Earth.
But only a handful of such asteroids that have penetrated the
Moon's
orbit have been spotted by asteroid search programs."
--Grant Stokes, Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Project
"In all likelihood, a small Tunguska-size object will occur
over
uninhabited areas of the earth. In that respect, the damage will
be
limited, but the psychological effects will be dramatic and
global, because
it would convey the message that we are living in an extremely
dangerous
universe -which is at the same time true and not true... We need
to be
psychologically prepared."
--Benny Peiser, MSNBC, 20 June 2002
(1) SCIENTISTS: ASTEROID PASSED EARTH
The New York Times, 21 June 2002
(2) EARTH HAS CLOSE CALL WITH AN ASTEROID
MSNBC, 20 June 2002
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE THREAT OF AN
ASTEROID IMPACT?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/177595.asp?0si=
(3) SPACE ROCK'S CLOSE APPROACH
BBC News Online, 20 June 2002
(4) EARTH HAS 'CLOSE SHAVE' FROM LARGE ASTEROID
The Daily Telegraph, 21 June 2002
(5) MANY COMETS GO 'POOF' AND FALL APART
Reuters, 20 June 2002
(6) SOLVING THE CASE OF THE MISSING COMETS
Space.com, 20 June 2002
(7) CATASTROPHIC DISRUPTION WORKSHOP
Patrick Michel <michel@obs-nice.fr>
(8) 2002MN VS 2002LY45
Duncan Steel <D.I.Steel@salford.ac.uk>
(9) COSMIC DIASPORA THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
Michael Martin-Smith <martin@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk>
=================
(1) SCIENTISTS: ASTEROID PASSED EARTH
>From The New York Times, 21 June 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Asteroid-Close-Call.html
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) -- An asteroid the size of a football field hurtled
past the
Earth a week ago, missing what could have been a catastrophic
collision by a
mere 75,000 miles -- less than a third of the distance to the
moon.
The miss was one of the nearest ever recorded for an object of
that size,
scientists said Thursday. "It was a close shave," said
Brian Marsden of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
The asteroid would have caused "considerable loss of
life" if it had struck
Earth in a populated area, said Grant Stokes, the principal
investigator for
the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Project, whose New
Mexico
observatory spotted the object last week.
"The energy release would be of the magnitude of a large
nuclear weapon,"
Stokes said.
The asteroid was not detected until three days after it sped past
Earth on
June 14. When such asteroids are detected, they are usually
spotted far from
Earth, when they are approaching or on their way out.
The asteroid, provisionally named 2002 MN, was traveling at more
than 23,000
mph when it was spotted, Stokes said in a phone interview from
Lexington,
Mass., where he is associate head of the aerospace division of
MIT Lincoln
Laboratory.
Light in weight but with a diameter of between 50 and 120 yards,
2002 MN was
big enough to have caused the kind of devastation wreaked in
Siberia in
1908, when an asteroid that exploded above Tunguska flattened
nearly 800
square miles of forest.
That asteroid's air blast was believed to have done the damage,
since no
crater was found.
The size of asteroids is estimated by measuring their brightness,
without
knowing their composition. In general, damage on the ground
depends on what
an asteroid is made of, varying from solid metal to a loosely
bound
aggregate.
"Looking statistically at the asteroid population, maybe 50
times a year a
100-meter-class asteroid passes within a lunar distance of
Earth," Stokes
said. "But only a handful of such asteroids that have
penetrated the Moon's
orbit have been spotted by asteroid search programs."
Benny Peiser, an expert on near earth objects at Liverpool John
Moores
University in England, said that most asteroids do not come so
close, but
noted the latest "reminder" comes as Britain tests
telescopes on the Spanish
island of La Palma to search for the objects.
"Such near misses do highlight the importance of detecting
these objects,"
he said.
Currently, there is no program dedicated to searching for objects
of 2002
MN's size. NASA concentrates its efforts on bodies bigger than
.62 miles
across, which would cause worse devastation.
"NASA has a goal of discovering and obtaining good orbits
for all the near
earth objects with diameters larger than 1 kilometer," said
Thomas Morgan, a
scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington. "Asteroids of
this size could
potentially destroy civilization as we know it."
Such asteroids could theoretically hit Earth every million years,
or at
longer intervals.
Asteroids the size of 2002 MN are estimated to hit the Earth
every 100 to
several hundred years, causing local damage but no disaster to
civilization
or the planet's ecosystem, Stokes said.
"It's something the public should know about, but shouldn't
get nervous
about," he said. "Civilization has to get used to them
on some level."
Copyright 2002, The New York Times
=============
(2) EARTH HAS CLOSE CALL WITH AN ASTEROID
>From MSNBC, 20 June 2002
http://www.msnbc.com/news/177595.asp?0si=-
Rock passes within 75,000 miles, detected only afterward
By Alan Boyle
MSNBC
June 20 - An asteroid roughly as wide as a football field
gave Earth its
closest call in eight years last week, astronomers say. They say
asteroid
2002 MN passed within 75,000 miles of Earth - closer than the
moon - last
Friday, but it was not detected until three days afterward. At an
estimated
50 to 100 yards across, the asteroid wasn't big enough to cause
an
"Armageddon"-style catastrophe, but in a worst-case
scenario, it could have
laid waste to a city.
THE CLOSE SHAVE on June 14 was similar to an asteroid encounter
reported in
March - but this time the space rock came much closer. In fact,
NASA says
this was the closest known approach of such an object since 1994,
when a
much smaller asteroid came within 65,000 miles (105,000
kilometers).
As was the case for the March encounter, 2002 MN came from
Earth's sunward
side, where daylight obscures visual observations of the sky. It
was only
after the object made the switch to the night sky that
astronomers with the
LINEAR asteroid-tracking effort in New Mexico could gather enough
data to
compute its orbit.
"Things of this size come by every few weeks," Don
Yeomans, who heads NASA's
Near-Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told
MSNBC.com.
"It's just a matter of finding them."
Like the asteroid in March, 2002 MN isn't nearly as large as the
rock
thought to have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs 65
million years
ago. That's a good thing, but because such objects are relatively
dim,
they're virtually impossible to detect unless they pass close to
Earth. And
although they're small, they can still pack a nuclear-level
punch.
For example, 2002 MN is roughly the size of the object that
scientists think
blew up over Siberia's Tunguska forest in 1908, laying waste to
hundreds of
square miles. A similar-size asteroid, made of iron, blasted out
the
4,000-foot-wide (1,200-meter-wide) Meteor Crater in Arizona
50,000 years
ago.
ACTUAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE
If something as big as 2002 MN were to come down over New York,
it would
have an effect far more devastating than the Sept. 11 terror
attacks.
Asteroid experts are quick to point out that the chances of such
an
incredibly unlucky event happening in the worst possible place
are
vanishingly small.
"In all likelihood, a small Tunguska-size object will occur
over uninhabited
areas of the earth," said Benny Peiser, an anthropologist at
Liverpool John
Moores University who is an expert on the social impact of cosmic
collisions. "In that respect, the damage will be limited,
but the
psychological effects will be dramatic and global, because it
would convey
the message that we are living in an extremely dangerous universe
-which is
at the same time true and not true."
The two close calls reported within just four months demonstrate
how quickly
astronomers are adding to their capability to detect asteroids,
he told
MSNBC.com.
"It's just because we are enhancing our detection capability
all the time
that we now realize what is going on in our immediate
environment," Peiser
said. "If we were actually observing all the objects that
are shaving us
every day, I think people would be quite concerned."
Researchers estimate that a Tunguska-level blow-up should happen
every 100
to 200 years. "My guess is that (the next one) will happen
within our
lifetimes," Peiser said, "and hopefully it will be a
small object. We need
to be psychologically prepared."
GREATER AWARENESS
On that score, Peiser believes there just might be a benefit to
the
recurring asteroid alerts that began four years ago - about the
time that
the Hollywood movies "Deep Impact" and
"Armageddon" came out. Scientists as
well as the general public are becoming more aware of the
potential threat,
and the limitations of today's monitoring systems.
In the years ahead, astronomers hope to beef up their
asteroid-monitoring
efforts, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, and there's
also a series
of space missions scheduled to study the nature of asteroids and
comets. A
comet flyby mission known as Contour is due for launch next
month, and Japan
is to send out its MUSES-C spacecraft later this year to sample
an asteroid.
Yeomans said the knowledge gained by such missions could be used
to figure
out what to do if a large near-Earth object were to pose a
collision threat.
But Peiser said the kind of scenario posed by 2002 MN probably
wouldn't give
us enough time to send out an "Armageddon"-style space
crew or even a
nuclear interceptor.
"The objects will be spotted only days before they
hit," he said, "if they
are spotted at all."
Copyright 2002, MSNBC
=================
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE THREAT OF AN ASTEROID IMPACT?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/177595.asp?0si=
* 64644 responses
The threat is being exaggerated.
24%
I'm adding it to my list of worries.
23%
Something needs to be done! Now!
28%
None of the above.
24%
=========
(3) SPACE ROCK'S CLOSE APPROACH
>From the BBC News Online, 20 June 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2056000/2056403.stm
By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
Astronomers have revealed that on 14 June, an asteroid the size
of a
football pitch made one of the closest ever recorded approaches
to the
Earth.
It is only the sixth time an asteroid has been seen to penetrate
the Moon's
orbit, and this is by far the biggest rock to do so.
What has worried some astronomers, though, is that the space
object was only
detected on 17 June, several days after its flyby.
It was found by astronomers working on the Lincoln Laboratory
Near Earth
Asteroid Research (Linear) search programme in New Mexico.
Catalogued as 2002MN, the asteroid was travelling at over 10
kilometres a
second (23,000 miles per hour) when it passed Earth at a distance
of around
120,000 km (75,000 miles).
The last time such an object is recorded to have come this close
was in
December 1994.
'Wake up call'
The space rock has a diameter of between 50-120 metres (160 - 320
feet).
This is actually quite small when compared with many other
asteroids and
incapable of causing damage on a global scale.
Nonetheless, an impact from such a body would still be dangerous.
If 2002MN had hit the Earth, it would have caused local
devastation similar
to that which occurred in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, when 2,000
square
kilometres of forest were flattened.
Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, UK, told
BBC News
Online: "Our ever increasing observational capacity is now
detecting these
close shaves from small objects.
"The probability is actually quite high that a
Tunguska-sized object will
hit us in our lifetimes."
'Bolt from the blue'
A major issue of concern centres on how late this object was
picked up.
Dr John Davies, of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, has
calculated the orbit
of the asteroid from the Linear data.
He concludes that the asteroid came out of the Sun and was
impossible for
Linear to see until one hour after its flyby of the Earth on the
14th.
Dr Davies said: "...if an asteroid were to approach close to
an imaginary
line joining the Earth and the Sun it would never be visible in a
night-time
sky and would be quite impossible to discover with normal
telescopes. Its
arrival would come, literally, as a bolt from the blue."
Space-based telescopes, such as Hubble and the future European
Gaia
spacecraft, are the only means of searching for asteroids in the
daytime
sky.
Copyright 2002, BBC
===========
(4) EARTH HAS 'CLOSE SHAVE' FROM LARGE ASTEROID
>From The Daily Telegraph, 21 June 2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2002%2F06%2F21%2Fwastro21.xml
By Robert Uhlig
An asteroid the size of a football pitch and large enough to raze
a major
city missed the Earth by just 75,000 miles last Friday, a
distance
considered by astronomers to be a "close shave".
In one of the closest known passes of an asteroid to Earth, the
space rock
passed well within the orbit of the Moon at a speed of more than
23,000 mph,
but it was not detected until Monday.
Had the asteroid, called 2002MN, struck a built-up area the
damage and loss
of life would have been similar to that caused by a large nuclear
bomb.
Although small compared to some asteroids, 2002MN passed Earth by
a hair's
breadth in galactic terms. It was big enough to have caused local
devastation similar to that caused by the asteroid which
destroyed 2,000
kilometres of forest in Tungska, Siberia, in 1908.
Kevin Yates of the Near Earth Object Information Centre, part of
the
National Space Centre, said that had 2002MN collided with Earth,
"the most
likely thing is that it would have detonated in the atmosphere,
creating a
blast wave".
He said: "You're talking in the region of 10 megatons -
quite a lot of
energy to be released in any one place."
Dr Benny Peiser, from Liverpool John Moores University, an expert
on Near
Earth Objects, said: "The vast majority of NEOs discovered
do not come this
close. Such near misses highlight the importance of detecting
these
objects."
The asteroid, which was between 150ft and 360ft across, was
detected by
American astronomers from the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth
Asteroid
Research Project in New Mexico.
It was only the sixth asteroid known to have penetrated the
Moon's orbit,
and by far the biggest. Brian Marsden, from the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics said: "It was a close shave."
There is no programme searching for NEOs approaching the southern
hemisphere
and Nasa, the American space agency, only looks for bodies bigger
than a
kilometre.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
===============
(5) MANY COMETS GO 'POOF' AND FALL APART
>From Reuters, 20 June 2002
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020620/sc_nm/space_comets_dc_1
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When comets born at the edge of our solar
system
disappear from view, they don't just lose their tails and go
dormant; 99
percent of them go "poof" and crumble to bits, U.S.
researchers reported on
Thursday.
"These objects are simply not where we expect them to
be," Harold Levison of
the Southwest Research Institute said in a statement. "The
only explanation
that I can think of is that they go 'poof."'
The mystery of the missing comets has been debated for decades.
Some astronomers theorized that most of those that issued from a
cloud of
comets, known as the Oort cloud, at the edge of the solar system
eventually
stopped producing their highly visible tails and went dormant,
making them
harder to detect.
But Levison and his colleagues, writing in the journal Science,
said their
studies showed the vast majority of these comets broke apart
after a few
passes through the inner solar system.
Levison, based in Boulder, Colorado, and his team compared
computer models
with observations of comets to figure out where the missing ones
went.
The team created thousands of fictitious new comets, tracked the
comets as
they entered the solar system from the Oort cloud, and calculated
their
evolution based on the gravitational influences of the sun,
planets, and
Milky Way.
By following comet trajectories until they were ejected from the
solar
system, hit a planet or struck the sun, team members estimated
the number of
dormant comets should have been 100 times larger than the number
actually
seen. From this, they deduced that 99 percent of comets simply
vanished.
They noted that Oort cloud comets disintegrate far more often
than those
originating in the Kuiper Belt, a comet source just beyond
Neptune.
Both kinds of comets are made of the same mixture of ice and
rock, but
differences in the chemical or physical characteristics of their
formation
areas might account for the variation in behavior, the
researchers said.
Copyright 2002, Reuters
===============
(6) SOLVING THE CASE OF THE MISSING COMETS
>From Space.com, 20 June 2002
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/comet_missing_020620.html
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
Astronomers know where most newly discovered comets come from, a
reservoir
on the outskirts of our solar system called the Oort Cloud, which
extends
nearly halfway to the next star.
Now and then, one of these distant comets is booted into the
inner solar
system and loops around the Sun on its first close pass. Most of
these
first-time comets are then kicked clear out beyond the Oort
Cloud, never to
return. A smaller number are swallowed by the Sun. The remainder
are set on
a new course that will bring them back around the Sun in anywhere
from 20
years to a million years, depending on their new orbits.
Yet in the five decades that scientists have known all this, they
have
puzzled over why they don't see hundreds of times more returning
comets than
they do. The answer may be that the objects simply disintegrate,
according
to a new study.
Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, for whom the reservoir of frozen
dirtballs is
named, figured out that of those comets that survive their first
trip and
should therefore be locked into recurring passes through the
inner solar
system, far too few ever seem to come back. The leading idea to
explain this
problem suggests that the comets essentially turn off, possibly
having
depleting the volatile gases that make their glowing heads and
tails. They
become, in effect, asteroids.
Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder,
Colorado, plugged
all these factors into a new computer model and found that there
simply
aren't enough asteroids being discovered to account for the
prevailing
suggestion, however.
"This implies is that what's happening to these things is
that they
disintegrate," said Harold Levison, who led the study.
"Ninety-nine percent
of them disintegrate." Astronomers saw an example of this
last year when a
comet called LINEAR came apart in dramatic fashion.
The new study further found, however, that comets originating in
a nearer
reservoir known as the Kuiper Belt do not come apart as
frequently.
In a telephone interview, Levison said this is the first evidence
suggesting
that the two populations of comets may be composed differently.
"Here's a population of comets that just go 'poof' and
disappear," he said.
"The other doesn't"
Figuring out why could help researchers better understand the
dynamics of
the solar system and how planets came to be, since comets are
thought to be
pristine records of the formation era. The study will be
published in the
June 21 issue of the journal Science.
Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland writes
in an
accompanying analysis in Science that if the interpretation by
Levison and
his colleagues is correct, it would indeed be the first hard
evidence for
physical differences between the two comet populations, possibly
due to
different origins or evolutionary processes. The case is not
firm, though.
"At present, comets remain a puzzle," Bailey said.
Copyright 2002, Space.com
==============
(7) CATASTROPHIC DISRUPTION WORKSHOP
>From Patrick Michel <michel@obs-nice.fr>
Dear Benny,
Could you please send via CCNET the annoucement of the next
Catastrophic
Disruption meeting (see below). Please, already note that the
Hotel requires
for the end of this June 2002 that we make a firm commitment that
the
workshop will take place and needs a good estimate of the number
of
single/double room (limited to 50, and we received about 20
answers so far).
Therefore, interested people who have not yet responded should
fill the form
below and send it back to michel@obs-nice.fr
as soon as possible. This is
important in order to secure the meeting
arrangement. Room reservations, specific plans for talks, and
other more
specific engagements will only be asked later. The important
information we
need at this point is a good estimate of the number of
participants.
Here is the announcement with details. Thank you in advance if
you send it
via CCNET.
Sincerely yours,
Patrick MICHEL
--------------
CATASTROPHIC DISRUPTION VI
(CD-VI) WORKSHOP
SECOND MAILING
We received about 30 replies in response to our first mailing
regarding
holding CD-VI with most of them expressing interest in attending
the
workshop. We have decided to proceed with the
workshop, so note it on your calenders and feel free to forward
this email
to any colleagues who may be interested and who may have not
received the
email announcement:
MEETING: Sixth Workshop on Catastophic Disruption in the
Solar System.
PLACE: Cannes, France
DATES: June 9-11, 2003.
DEDICATION: Dr. Paolo Farinella
SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Dan Durda (Chair), Erik
Asphaug, Kevin
Housen, Patrick Michel, and Akiko Nakamura.
Patrick Michel will take care of local arrangements and gourmet
feasting and
will be the conference administrator.
The meeting room in Cannes can easily accommodate the 50 or so
scientists
expected for this workshop (see information on the meeting room
and Hotel
below). The Hotel requires for the end of this June 2002 that we
make a firm
commitment that the workshop will take place and needs a
good estimate of the number of single/double rooms. Therefore,
interested
people should fill the form below and send it back to michel@obs-nice.fr as
soon as possible.
The format of the meeting, in keeping with the workshop spirit,
will allow
ample time for discussion. The main themes of the workshop
are:
* Scientific Issues of Catastrophic Disruption.
* Astronomical and Meteoritical Observations.
* Laboratory Experiments.
* From the Lab to
Nature: Scaling algorithms and hydrocode results.
We expect that the registration fee will be around $75 per
attendee which
will include a banquet and probably a field trip.
Additional information on
travel to Cannes plus places to stay is attached below.
Also, we are hopeful of having a small amount of travel money
available to
support young scientists who have no other travel funds and
scientists who
could not attend the conference without financial support. As
soon as we
have confirmation of the travel funds, we will announce their
availability.
Finally, we plan to have Proceedings of this workshop published
in one of
the main Journals on Planetary Sciences.
We will let you know other details in the next annoucements.
Thank you in
advance for sending back as soon as possible the form placed
after the
information on the meeting location below.
Dan Durda
Patrick Michel Donald R. Davis
durda@boulder.swri.edu
michel@obs-nice.fr drd@psi.edu
*************************************************************************
Meeting Logistics:
In the heart of the legendary French Riviera lies the town of
Cannes with
its unequalled bay, traditions, and surrounded by small typical
villages.
The Croisette Beach Hotel in which the meeting will take place is
located
only a short step from the beaches of La Croisette,
and a few minutes by walk from the old town with its typical
architecture,
restaurants and local people.
The Hotel itself has 50 rooms blocked for us, all with the modern
confort of
a four-star Hotel (maximum number of stars in France):
soundproofed with
air-conditionning, colour cable TV and filter power outlet for
computer
equipment.
For further information, visit the Croisette Beach home page:
http://www.croisettebeach.com/
Transportation: Cannes is located about 30 kilometers
from Nice
International Airport. A direct bus makes the connection
Nice-Cannes every
30 minutes from the airport for 10 Euros/person and the Hotel is
located
close to the Bus Stop. You can also rent a car if you wish and
the Hotel as a private parking. Further details will be sent in
next
announcements.
A welcoming reception cocktail/buffet will be organised in the
evening
preceeding the first day of the workshop, certainly on the
private beach of
the Hotel.
Lodging: We strongly recommend staying in the Hotel itself,
so all
attendees will be co-located. There are also other Hotels
but at this
period, although the summer crowd arrives in July, it remains
better to
check availabilities as soon as possible. If you stay in the
Hotel and use
the bus to and from the airport, a car is unnecessary. Cannes is
a rather
small town and the different attractive places are all accessible
by walk.
After negociating with the management of the Hotel, the
accomodations and
prices in the Hotel have been defined as follows.
The prices given below correspond to seminar rates, which mean
that they
include (per day and per person):
- the Hotel room (single or double)
- a breakfast buffet
- a Lunch (drinks included) in the Hotel restaurant on its
private beach.
- the renting of the conference room for 70 persons with two
coffee breaks
(with croissants, cakes, tea, coffee, mineral water, fruit
juices) and
basic equipments: screen, retro-projector, paper-board,
seminar bags
and mineral waters on each table. A videoprojector can be
rented,
but I can certainly negociate to use the one of Nice
Observatory!
Now the prices ...:
113 Euros/person/day in double rooms (with twin beds)
173 Euros/person/day in a single room
Preferential rates will be offered to participants willing to
arrive the
week-end before the meeting (let us know as soon as possible),
and for
accompanying persons willing to use the private beach
accomodations.
50 rooms are currently blocked for us at the Hotel until the end
of June
2002 when we will have to confirm that the workshop will take
place. So we
need rather quickly to have a good estimate of the number of
participants
who definitely wish to come. Participants will then have to
contact
directly the Hotel for booking their room for the appropriate
dates.
Reservations (no charges) must be made before the end of March
2003. Room
availabilities are not guaranteed after this date, and the Hotel
will charge
a certain percentage of the room price in case of cancellation
between April
2003 and the beginning of the workshop. Note that this part is
still under
negociations (reservation deadline, cancellation policy etc ..)
and more
precise information will be given in the next annoucement (by
July 2002).
For participants who want to stay in another Hotel or in case of
a number of
participants greater than the Hotel rooms can receive, we'll try
to obtain
some arrangements with nearby Hotels but nothing can be ensured
yet about
this. However in this case, 55 Euros per participant and per day
will be
required for the Lunch, the conference room accomodation,
and coffee
breaks.
Since the Lunch is already included in the prices, only the diner
will be in
charge of participants. Several restaurants are located close to
the Hotel
on the Croisette, but participants may prefer a 10 minute walk to
have diner
in typical restaurants in the heart of the old town or on the
harbor, where
there are many choices with many prices from low to high ....
Note that a
banquet will be planned during an evening in one of the good
restaurants of
the town or in the area.
****************************************************************************
*
PRE-REGISTRATION FORM
CDVI WORKSHOP, June 9-11 2003, France
1- Last Name:
2- First Name:
3- Address:
4- Email:
5- Do you plan to attend? (will attend, may attend, will not
attend)
6- Do you plan to stay in a Double Room/Single Room?
7- If Double Room, do you plan to share it with an accompanying
person
or with another participant?
8- What is the tentative title/topic of your presentation?
9- Would you prefer an oral or poster presentation?
10- Thinking in terms of progress in the field since CDV (July
1998), what
topics might you like to see discussed during open discussion
periods?
11- Anything else?
Thank you for sending this form to michel@obs-nice.fr
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick Michel
Observatoire de la Cote
d'Azur michel@obs-nice.fr
UMR 6529 Cassini /
CNRS
B.P.
4229
Tel: +33-4-92003055
06304 Nice cedex 4,
France Fax:
+33-4-92003121
http://www.obs-nice.fr/michel/pageperso.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(8) 2002MN VS 2002LY45
>From Duncan Steel <D.I.Steel@salford.ac.uk>
Dear Benny,
There is a slight misunderstanding in the press release from the
(UK) Near
Earth Object Information Centre concerning the small asteroid
2002MN.
It is stated that the asteroid "was travelling at over 10
km/s (23,000 miles
per hour) when it passed Earth." Well, that's true: the
velocity of the
asteroid in space (its heliocentric velocity) was about 35
km/sec.
The "over 10" km/sec cited is actually the orbital
intersection speed (i.e.
the relative velocity of the Earth and the asteroid at the point
where their
orbits meet). The value is actually about 10.4 km/sec.
That, however, is not the speed with which the asteroid would
have entered
the atmosphere/hit the ground if it had been on a collision
course with
Earth. To get from the 10.4 km/sec to the impact speed one must
add it in
quadrature with the Earth's escape velocity of just below 11.2
km/sec.
Thus if 2002 MN had, in fact, been on a collision course it would
have
arrived at a speed of just below 15.3 km/sec.
Finally, the media buzz about 2002 MN seems remarkable in view of
the fact
that the risk list currently contains an asteroid (2002 LY45)
which is
around a mile across and has a very high potential impact speed
(over 34
km/sec), putting it into the "global catastrophe" bin
should it hit. At my
time of writing it still has 34 potential impacts within a
century listed
(down from the 800-plus a few days ago), of which eight within
the next 40
years have probabilities of order one-in-a-million and are ranked
as Torino
Scale 1.
We cannot hope, in this era, to deal with asteroids like 2002 MN;
it is
objects like 2002 LY45 which are the more dangerous, and also the
ones we
can tackle.
Regards,
Duncan Steel
=============
(9) COSMIC DIASPORA THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
>From Michael Martin-Smith <martin@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk>
Dear Benny,
This week's CCNet notes the growing "gold rush" in
exoplanet discovery, and
Malcolm Miller's prediction (I sincerely hope, correct) that
Humanity will
surely find a way to visit them provided that a killer impact
does not get
us first!
To this we must also add Prof. Michael Rampino's data on
supervolcanic
eruptions which he states as equivalent to a 1 km asteroid impact
and which
occur every 50,000 years or so, i.e. with twice the frequency.
From this it is clear that we can and indeed should build up an
extraterrestrial civilization well in advance of such calamities
- the more
so since supervolcanism is, as Prof. Rampino says, probably even
harder to
predict or mitigate than a major asteroid impact.
The techniques of cheap reusable spaceflight, in situ use of
resources ( eg
the Moon/NEOs) for space industry and construction, and longterm
closed loop
ecosystems for Island colonies,( see www.ssi.org)
will give us the means to
avoid calamity by a priori dispersal - or cosmic Diaspora if you
want a more
resonant term.
Since we do not know how long we have to wait for either form of
catastrophe, and since we also are likely to take some
generations to
achieve a meaningful Diaspora into Space, the only possible
alternatives for
a thinking species are
1/ Be fatalistic and live only for today,( Leave it to Allah, if
you prefer!)
or 2/ Beef up our space programmes in a multi-generational but
focussed
campaign to achieve a true cosmic civilization
I submit that if our civilization is to have any ultimate meaning
it must
choose option 2, as expeditiously as practicable. If well planned
and
executed, such a path will yield much new knowledge, technology,
industry
and employment en route. In short we have nothing to lose, and a
Galaxy to
gain
"The Lord helps those who help Themselves!" (Rabbi
Hillel, c 1st century AD)
Those of us who follow or work in the relevant sciences should
begin to
acquire a united voice and clearly advocate human space
exploration,
development, and colonization as an active goal for all
Humankind.
Dr Michael Martin-Smith
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