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Asteroids

SQ Solves Detection

New asteroid observation technology solves the impact.

Dawn Walton 08 June 27, “A Canadian gadget that may save the world” Science. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080627.wsatellite27/BNStory/Science/home

The $12-million Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, dubbed NEOSSat, is considered a world's first - designed specifically as an early warning system to pinpoint asteroids on a collision course with Earth. It will also detect space junk in the path of other orbiting satellites to prevent crashes that could shut down telecommunications - television, telephone, GPS and banking systems - around the globe. "These hazards are very real and potentially devastating to life on Earth," Rose Goldstein, vice-president of research at the University of Calgary, said yesterday in announcing the project. Scientists gathered at the university's Rothney Astrophysical Observatory southwest of Calgary, where the country's only telescope to search the night sky for asteroids is based. Only a handful of other ground-based telescopes around the world are looking for potential dangers, and all are hampered by unfavourable weather conditions and the light of the sun. NEOSSat, fitted with a baffle to block the sunlight, aims to overcome such limitations by being positioned far above the Earth where its 15-centimetre diameter telescope can work around the clock beaming back images from deep space. "This is the cutting edge of technology," said William Harvey, a project manager with the Canadian Space Agency, a partner in the mission. Mississauga, Ont.-based Dynacon Inc., which has built another "microsatellite" now in orbit studying the structure of stars, is already working on the blueprints. When complete,NEOSSat will piggyback on a rocket to orbit about 600 to 800 kilometres above the Earth for at least five years running on less power than a 60-watt light bulb. Fittingly, the project was announced just a few days before the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event, when a meteorite blasted into the Earth's atmosphere over a Siberian forest, scorching and knocking down millions of trees over 2,000 square kilometres. Scientists had estimated that the June 30, 1908, impact had the force equivalent to a 10-to 20-megatonne bomb, but simulations conducted last year suggested the impact was more likely one-quarter to one-third that size. Events like Tunguska are rare, but every year, about 7,000 meteorites touch the ground, many just small fragments of space rock that cause little damage. Experts have catalogued about 9,100 near-Earth asteroids floating around out there, but officials figure that 95,000 space rocks at least 140 metres in diameter - all larger than the one that hit Tunguska - are still in orbit. U.S. Congress has mandated NASA to find 90 per cent of them by 2020, and researchers said yesterday NEOSSat will be key in accomplishing that mission by spotting asteroids as far away as 150 million kilometres. At the same time, Lauchie Scott, one of the researchers on the project with Defence Research and Development Canada, said about 12,000 pieces of space junk are circling the planet, but only 4 per cent of them are active satellites, and more and more objects are sent into space every year. NEOSSat should be able to detect objects of space junk that are 15,000 to 50,000 kilometres away, predict collision paths and warn operators to move their satellites, or foresee if any will fall to Earth, he said. "Space is getting more congested," Mr. Scott added. But what happens once one of these potentially civilization-ending asteroids is spotted heading toward our atmosphere? Do we have the kind of blow-them-up and deflect-them technology that Hollywood likes to muse about? Professor Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary, who leads the Near Earth Space Surveillance asteroid-search program, saidasteroid hunting could give society time to plan an evacuation or allow scientists to attempt to divert the danger.

No Asteroids

No impact—chance of an asteroid hitting Earth is zero

Bee 02 [Robert Bee, Editor at Journal of Macarthur Astronomical Society, 8-27-02]

That’s not to say that a large asteroid won’t hit Earth one day. But the last really big one was 65 million years ago (the dinosaur killer and astronomers estimate that such an impact will occur, on average, once every 100 million years. So the next big hit could be anytime in the next 35 million years. My concern is the matter in which some news media distort facts for sensationalism. The printer banner headlines Asteroid to Hit earth in 2019, for 1.2 km wide asteroid 2002NT7, forgetting to report that astronomers said there was less than one in a million chance of that happening. This frightens people unnecessarily. The odds have since been reduced to virtually zero.

No earth-killing asteroids are on a collision course with earth – Even if they are, mortality rate is equal to flying on a plane.

Easterbrook 03 (senior fellow at The New Republic) 2003 [Gregg, “We're All Gonna Die!” Wired Magazine 11.07 July 2003//loghry]

Estimates by Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute of Boulder, Colorado, suggest that 500,000 asteroids roughly the size of the Tunguska rock wander through Earth's orbit. Much spookier are asteroids big enough to cause a Chicxulub-class strike. At least 1,100 are believed to exist in Earth's general area, some capable of plunging the planet into a years-long freeze while showering the globe with doomsday rain as corrosive as battery acid. None of these killer rocks is known to be on a collision course with Earth - but then, the courses of hundreds have yet to be charted. Can we stop an incoming asteroid? Not yet. NASA is trying to coordinate tracking of near-Earth objects but has no technology that could be used against them and no plan to build such technology. This may be unwise. As the former Microsoft technologist Nathan Myhrvold has written, "Most estimates of the mortality risk posed by asteroid impacts put it at about the same risk as flying on a commercial airliner. However, you have to remember that this is like the entire human race riding the plane."

No Impact

Zero risk of asteroid extinction – They’re not big enough.

Bostrom 02 Professor of Philosophy and Global Studies at Yale University (Dr. Nick, Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards, http://www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html)

There is a real but very small risk that we will be wiped out by the impact of an asteroid or comet [48]. In order to cause the extinction of human life, the impacting body would probably have to be greater than 1 km in diameter (and probably 3 - 10 km). There have been at least five and maybe well over a dozen mass extinctions on Earth, and at least some of these were probably caused by impacts ([9], pp. 81f.). In particular, the K/T extinction 65 million years ago, in which the dinosaurs went extinct, has been linked to the impact of an asteroid between 10 and 15 km in diameter on the Yucatan peninsula. It is estimated that a 1 km or greater body collides with Earth about once every 0.5 million years.[10] We have only catalogued a small fraction of the potentially hazardous bodies. If we were to detect an approaching body in time, we would have a good chance of diverting it by intercepting it with a rocket loaded with a nuclear bomb [49].

2. Impact winter is overstated – The world will recover quickly.

Marusek 07 Nuclear Physicist and Engineer (James A., “Comet and Asteroid Threat Impact Analysis,” American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, http://www.aero.org/conferences/planetarydefense/2007papers/P4-3--Marusek-Paper.pdf)

I feel that the threat of a dust generated "impact winter" is vastly overstated and that any dust generated "impact winter" will not be anywhere near as severe nor last as long as some predict. • According to research from geologist, Kevin Pope, the K/T impact did not generate the quantities of fine dust needed to block the Sun completely and choke off photosynthesis. Approximately 99% of the debris produced was in the form of spherules, which are too coarse and heavy to remain suspended in the upper atmosphere for very long.Only 1% of the debris is fine dust generated from pulverized rock. If this fine dust were spread out across the entire globe, it would represent a thickness of ~ 0.001 inches (0.03 mm). Therefore the hypothesis of an "impact winter" is vastly overstated.24 • Just as dust that is kicked up into the atmosphere will block sunlight from hitting the earth, the dust will also act as an insulator trapping heat at the Earth’s surface. This includes the heat from (1) the impact and fireball, (2) firestorms, (3) fuel fires – oil, natural gas, coal, timber, methane hydrate, and (4) lava flows and volcanoes. This trapping effect will slow the decent of the temperature fall, and retard the onset of the "impact winter". • Some of my reasoning comes from reverse logic. The dust cloud is a global threat. It shuts off light from the entire surface of the Earth. It brings photosynthesis to a grinding halt. Several mammals and reptiles survived the asteroid that slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. We know this because the event did not result in total and complete extinction of all complex life forms. How long could these creatures survive without food? Several years seems like a very, very long time to go without food. • The oldest tropical honeybees, Cretotrigona prisca, were studied by Jacqueline M. Kozisek. These honeybees survived the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) extinction. The bees share a common ancestry tree with modern tropical honeybees making them an ideal subject for study. These bees rely on pollen for their energy source and do not store honey. They must have a constant source of blooming angiosperms to survive. They also require a temperature of 88-93°F (31-34°C) to maintain their metabolism. These insects are very sensitive to the environment changes. Covering the outer atmosphere with a dust layer, blocking off photosynthesis, and dropping tropical temperatures by 13°F (7°C) to 22°F (12°C) would have meant certain death for this species.If a global “impact winter” occurred, these honeybees could not survive years in the dark and cold without the flowering plants which they need to survive. But they did survive! 25 I feel the entire world will be dark within one hour after a large impact. The impact debris flung high into the stratosphere will cause this darkness. It will take several days for the majority of this debris to fall back to Earth’s surface. I believe at about the third day after impact, some light will start to get through.