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CCNet-SPECIAL: UK GOVERNMENT URGED TO ESTABLISH SPACEGUARD
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"A stupid charge often made against
science fiction is that it
is escapist. In fact, it is deeply
concerned with the real - and
often dangerous - universe. Almost 30
years ago I wrote in
Rendezvous With Rama: [...] Well, I am
happy to say that
Spaceguard is no longer fiction."
-- Sir Arthur C
Clarke, 16 September 2000
(1) THE COSMIC TIME BOMB WAITING TO GO OFF
Tim Radford, The Guardian, 16 September 2000
(2) ROCK SHOCK
Duncan Steel, The Guardian, 16 September 2000
(3) HOW I HELPED TO SAVE STAR TREK
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, The Times, 16 September
2000
============
(1) THE COSMIC TIME BOMB WAITING TO GO OFF: GOVERNMENT URGED TO
ESTABLISH SPACEGUARD AGAINST DEADLY COMETS
From The Guardian, 16 September 2000
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4064384,00.html
The cosmic time bomb waiting to go off: Government urged to
establish
'spaceguard' against deadly comets
By Tim Radford, science editor
Scientists will urge the government to set up a guard against
destruction from outer space, in an official report to be
published on
Monday. A task force will report that collisions with "near
earth
objects" such as asteroids and comets are no longer the
stuff of science
fiction: they represent a real threat. A collision with one the
size of
a small village could wipe out a third of the human race.
A 100-metre object crashes into the planet every 10,000 years -
triggering a 100 megaton explosion in the air, larger than the
largest
H-bomb ever tested. A 1km object scores a direct hit on the
planet every
100,000 years - with the force of 10m Hiroshimas.
The near earth objects task force, led by Professor Harry
Atkinson, a
scientist who has worked both for the European space agency and
Nasa,
was set up in January to consider the growing evidence of danger
and to
take advice from astronomers.
His report will urge the government to release £20m for a new
telescope in the southern hemisphere to comb the skies, and to
"buy"
time on a network of new or existing telescopes in Australia,
Hawaii and
the Canary islands to track the solar system's "loose
cannons". The task
force - made up of Prof Atkinson, Sir Crispin Tickell, the former
British ambassador to the UN, and Professor David Williams of
University
College, London - will also recommend close partnerships with
European
and US astronomers to ensure systematic global coverage.
The report will suggest support for space-based instruments to
sweep the
skies for potential cosmic traffic accidents and British
involvement in
European and US satellites which could rendezvous with asteroids
far
away and study them more closely. And it is expected to urge a
kind of
British "spaceguard" research centre, perhaps at the
Armagh observatory
in Northern Ireland, to keep disaster experts, astronomers, media
and
government in touch with each other.
One problem is that the US - which funds a "minor planet
centre" at
Harvard - controls (sic!) the detailed astronomical
information from
observers all over the world. The report could urge that Britain
share
some of the cost. "It's an unhealthy state of affairs even
if the US is
an ally, when one country controls (sic!) the information,"
said one
researcher [ - who seems completely ignorant of the international
status of
the Minor Planet Center which is working on behalf of and
answerable
only to the International Astronomical Union; the anti-American
slant is not
only factually incorrect, as so often, but rather embarrassing
given that
the U.S. (via NASA) is indeed the only country that is currently
helping to
foot the costs of running the MPC, BJP].
Objects from space hit the earth all the time - at speeds of more
than
10 miles a second. Most burn up harmlessly, as shooting stars.
Hundreds
have landed as small rocks. There is no record of any human being
killed
by a comet or asteroid - but a large one could destroy
civilisation. The
aim, the task force report will say, is to detect a potential
collision
years or, better still, decades in advance, giving governments of
the
world time to take measures.
"What they are talking about is setting in motion ways in
which we could
really deflect one of these things. That is the contentious one,
because
that involves nuclear weapons," said one astronomer last
night. "It
doesn't say that, but we know it does. If you are going to
deflect one,
you have got to use a nuclear weapon. There is no other way to do
it."
This would mean launching a robot spacecraft to meet an asteroid,
and
then triggering a precisely calculated explosion which would
knock it
off course so that it would miss its date with the earth.
Other bodies in the solar system are pock-marked by asteroid
craters.
The earth's asteroid scars have been removed by erosion - but
there have
been a number of collisions identified by planetary scientists.
The most
famous coincided with the death of the dinosaurs 65m years ago,
but a
100-metre object exploded over Siberia in 1908 and wiped out
2,000 sq
miles of forest. Two large asteroids have passed alarmingly close
(sic!)
to earth in the last few years. US and French astronomers
recently
calculated that 900 asteroids, all 1km across or larger, are
whizzing
around the solar system on orbits that cross that of the earth.
But
Europeans want to start tracking smaller objects.
"A 200-metre object plonking into the Atlantic would
effectively take
out all the cities around the seaboards. Those smaller events
occur
rather more fre quently - they are talking about a once every
several
thousand years event," said Duncan Steel of the University
of Salford,
one of the leading authorities on asteroids and comets. "The
report
highlights the way in which Britain can make a real contribution
to the
international programme - in essence to become No 2 in the world,
behind
the US. This would put the UK in a Europe-leading
role."
Jonathan Tate, a British army officer who several years ago began
pressing for governments to take the threat from space seriously,
is the
director of SpaceGuard UK. He argued that a crash from a 1km
asteroid -
a one-in-100,000-years event - could kill 25-30% of the human
race
within a year. Assuming a UK population of 60m when it happened,
that
would work out at an average of 150 deaths a year over that
100,000-year
period. One authority values a human life at £850,000.
"That actually works out at £123m a year to do
nothing," he said.
"One of the major effects of this report will be to dispel,
for once and
for all, the giggle factor associated with the impact hazard. No
sane
person can any longer regard this as either funny or science
fiction."
Lembit Opik, the Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire, has
been
pushing the government to take the issue seriously for two years.
"If
the report confirms a clear and present danger of an impact of
global
significance, and that we can do something about it with today's
technology, I shall be happy," he said yesterday.
Copyright 2000, Guardian Newspapers Limited
=============
ROCK SHOCK
From The Guardian, 16 September 2000
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4064278,00.html
UK scientists urge us to insure against the danger of being
flattened by
a giant asteroid
By Duncan Steel
The search for petrol may be at the front of our minds this
weekend. But
for those who want distraction, there is another big problem to
worry
about. We in Britain should take the threat more seriously of
collision
with large rocks from space.
Last December 30, lost among the millennium celebrations, Lord
Sainsbury
announced the formation of a top-level task force consisting of
Sir
Crispin Tickell, Dr Harry Atkinson and Professor David Williams,
to
investigate the asteroid hazard. Their report is due to be
published on
Monday. They are to confirm that the hazard we face is not
trivial, and
to recommend a suite of actions that the UK might implement, as a
participant in a global programme aimed at ensuring that we are
not
taken unawares.
Although the US is by far the dominant player in this field, the
UK is
well placed to lead European efforts to tackle this surprising
danger.
We must secure the future of the human race against attack from
above.
We have got all our eggs stored in one basket. It's called the
Earth. We
must keep it safe. The dinosaurs couldn't see their nemesis
coming. We
can, and having realised the danger it would be negligent of us
to adopt
an ostrich-like stance.
Forget, for the moment, Bruce Willis and the other heroes of
those
cosmic disaster movies Armageddon and Deep Impact. The way the
universe
really works is this. In our yearly orbit around the Sun, many
space
rocks pass us by. Some are large, some small. Some come near, but
most
keep their distance. The Earth collects about 40,000 tons of
celestial
debris each year, mainly tiny grains producing the familiar
shooting
stars seen on a dark night. But every so often a whopper slams
into us.
Of concern are those bigger than about a kilometre: maybe a mile
at the
outside. A crater 10 miles wide and several miles deep would be
excavated by one of these. By dint of the extreme speed, the
energy
released on impact would be equivalent to about 100,000 megatons
of TNT.
Around 10m times the Hiroshima bomb.
This is the threshold at which a global upset of the environment
would
be caused (putting it mildly), and we may expect at least a
quarter of
the human race to perish. How often might that happen? Answer:
about
once every 100,000 years.
Now, is that anything to be concerned about? As a scientist, I
have to
compare it against other risks. If the kill-rate is one in four
people,
the chance of dying that way is one in 400,000 per annum. If you
have a
remaining life expectancy of 40 years, this means there is a one
in
10,000 probability that an asteroid catastrophe will end your
days.
Statistics for airline disasters indicate that the average
westerner's
chance of dying in a plane crash is around one in 30,000. So
asteroids
are more dangerous than jetliners. We spend billions on the
latter, and
essentially nothing on the former.
Compare the risk against other major catastrophes, such as
nuclear power
stations or chemical plants exploding. The government has safety
guidelines for such things. Take that one chance in 100,000 per
annum
level of occurrence as reference: the guidelines say that if some
accident has that likelihood and it would kill more than 100
people,
then money should be spent if it is feasible to
reduce the risk. If
the death expectancy is more than 10,000, then the risk is
defined as
being "intolerable", and it must be tackled.
A massive asteroid impact anywhere around the globe has that
annual
probability, and no matter where it hits one may expect more than
10m
Britons to die. The safety guidelines indicate, then, that this
is
super-intolerable. The government must act.
The average voter still thinks people such as I are joking when
we argue
that there is a significant hazard posed by asteroids running
into the
Earth. Bruce Willis has fooled you. As a matter of fact, it is
about as
funny as cancer, or mass murder. Not to realise that some things
are
dangerous without having it painfully proven to you is dumb.
Hydrogen
bombs have never killed anyone. But we can imagine the
consequences of a
war in which they are used in anger.
What can we do, having recognised the danger? All that is
advocated at
this stage is a surveillance programme aimed at answering one
question:
is there a major impact due within the next century? Most likely
the
answer is "no".
It is like taking out car insurance: you hope you won't need to
make a
claim. But if the answer is "yes" then, with adequate
warning, we can
take ameliorative action. The only viable method we know to
divert an
identified impactor involves nuclear weapons, but it is not like
in the
movies. We are talking here about having 10 or 20 years to get
out there
and give it a small but sufficient nudge such that it misses our
planetary home, and does not deliver its far more powerful
punch.
The parallel with cancer is a pertinent one. Cancer screening
costs
relatively little and most often the result is negative. But if a
tumour
is found, then all the feasible cures are unpleasant, and they
may only
be used if the cancer is picked up early enough. And you won't
find it
if you don't look.
Ah, but you have never heard of anyone dying due to an asteroid
strike?
No, there have been no really large impacts during recorded
history. Of
course not. You wouldn't be here to read about it if there had
been. But
there was a 15 megaton event over Siberia in 1908 that would have
flattened the whole of London if the circumstances had been only
slightly different. And Chinese records tell us of a meteorite
explosion
killing tens of thousands in the 15th century.
Statistics can be misleading. Take air crashes. I'm a member of
the
Qantas frequent flyer club, an airline that has never had an
accident.
Does that mean that next time I board a Qantas jet to Sydney I
have zero
risk of dying? Circumstances can change quickly. Until recently
Concorde
was regarded as a paragon of air safety. Two decades ago
virtually
everyone, weather forecasters included, thought that hurricanes
never
hit England.
The only nation spending any sensible amount on asteroid defence
is the
United States. And I do mean "defence" - the two most
productive search
telescopes are owned by the US Air Force. In effect we too, need
to
declare war on the heavens.
Duncan Steel is reader in space technology at the University of
Salford.
Copyright 2000, Guardian Newspapers Limited
==============
HOW I HELPED TO SAVE STAR TREK
From THE TIMES, 16 September 2000
http://www.the-times.co.uk
How I helped to save Star Trek: it turned out to forecast our
future
By Arthur C. Clarke
I have two very good reasons for welcoming the Science Museum's
Star
Trek exhibition. Sixty years ago, I used to haunt the museum's
galleries, fascinated by its historic exhibits: how delighted I
am that
it now has some from the future.
And if I had not met Gene Roddenberry at a critical moment, Star
Trek
would have been a forgotten piece of television pre-history.
After
attending one of my lectures on space travel, Gene introduced
himself
and told me that his series was being cancelled because the
television
executives, in their inscrutable wisdom, had decided that there
was no
audience for it. Poor Gene was broke and about to mortgage his
home. I
introduced him to my lecture agent, who was sceptical but booked
him
into a small hall, which couldn't hold the audience he attracted.
That
was the turning point: as Gene wrote in a tribute on my 70th
birthday:
"Arthur literally made my Star Trek idea possible."
Now there are purists who say that Star Trek isn't science
fiction, but
science fantasy, and they have a point. Genuine science fiction
should
describe things that could happen according to present knowledge,
and
today we are fairly certain that we won't be able to dash from
one star
system to another in time for the next week's episode. We can
also be
sure that the inhabitants of other worlds won't look anything
like human
beings, or speak fluent American.
Yet much that once seemed fantasy has now become fact. Sixty
years ago
if anyone had written a story in which a city was destroyed by
banging
two small pieces of metal together, virtually all physicists
would have
said: "Utter nonsense!" Five years later, this is how
the greatest of
wars was ended. Today there are many other examples of my Third
Law: Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Science fiction is probably best known to the general public for
its
successful prediction of space travel, even though most of the
details
are often hilariously wrong. Jules Verne got the muzzle velocity
right
for his "moon gun", but the unfortunate travellers
would have been
reduced to a thin smear before they left the barrel. And H. G.
Wells's
"gravity screen" is physically impossible: it would
violate the law of
the conservation of energy.
From the 1930s onwards it was generally realised that the rocket
is the
only way to go. Nevertheless their spaceships were usually built
in
garages by eccentric professors with a couple of assistants. Few
imagined Cape Kennedy and armies of engineers.
The solar system has also failed to live up to expectations.
Although
the Moon was written off a long time ago, there were still hopes
for
Mars, until our space probes showed that it was a frozen desert
with an
atmosphere far too thin to breathe even if it contained oxygen,
which it
doesn't. No canals, no princesses, probably no life of any kind.
Well, I don't believe it. The still-busy Mars Surveyor has sent
back
some of the most extraordinary images ever received from space.
One
shows what any unbiased observer would say are clumps of bushes
in a
frozen landscape. Even more spectacular are gigantic "glass
worms"
hundreds of feet long: they are probably frozen lava tubes, but I
can't
help hoping.
A stupid charge often made against science fiction is that it is
escapist. In fact, it is deeply concerned with the real - and
often
dangerous - universe. Almost 30 years ago I wrote in Rendezvous
With
Rama: "At 0946 GMT on the morning of September 11 in the
exceptionally
beautiful summer of the year 2071, most of the inhabitants of
Europe saw
a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky moving at 50
kilometres a
second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains
of
northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labour of
centuries . . .
"After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a
determination and a
unity that no earlier age could have shown. No meteorite large
enough to
cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the
defences of
Earth.
"So began Project Spaceguard."
Well, I am happy to say that Spaceguard is no longer fiction: by
a truly
amazing coincidence, this has just appeared on my computer
screen:
"Government task force to report on 'Deep Impact'
threat"
The report announces that, after a four-year campaign by
Spaceguard UK,
a task force on "near-earth objects" is to publish its
report on Monday.
The Task Force's terms of reference were: "To confirm the
nature of the
impact hazard, identify current UK activities and make
recommendations
on future action."
Who says that science fiction has nothing to do with the real
world?
Stay tuned.
Copyright 2000, The Times Newspapers Ltd.
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