Here at the AAAS meeting in San Francisco I've attended a couple sessions about the threat of asteroids hitting the earth and wiping out a city, a country or the world.
I'll be writing a story for Wired News about this topic. Here's are a few tidbits:
• Back in late December 2004, astronomers became increasingly freaked out about the prospect of an asteroid named Apophis hitting the earth in 2029. The chances of a direct hit rose to 2.7 percent as scientists looked at their data, but then they got a handle on the numbers and the risk dropped.
Now, astronomers aren't too worried about Apophis in particular, but they expect to have many more similar scares as they get more of a handle on asteroid-detection technology.
• Scientists are looking into sending up a spaceship to meet a potentially dangerous asteroid -- but not necessarily to blow it up. One idea is to use the tiny gravitational field of a spaceship to move the asteroid to a different path.
• No one knows who the "decider" is when it comes to dealing with an asteroid threat. The U.N. may ultimately make the call on the proper protocol.
In case you're wondering, the asteroid in the photo is not Apophis. It's another one called Itokawa.
