Today is Asteroid Day. This is a world-wide event and a great day to promote astronomy in general. You can follow it on the Asteroid Day Live webcast. Earlier today there was an interesting ESA conference in Darmstadt.
Predicting impact from asteroids on earth is becoming possible. Astronomy observation techniques from ground telescopes and from space telescopes are becoming more sophisticated. Avoiding impact like in the famous movie Armageddon may become possible in the future if we learn to detect potential impact very early. (The practical deviation methods may be very different from the one in the movie.)
It is no use to cultivate doom scenarios. But very much like in all sustainability issues, the principle of precaution should prevail. We should take care of our own providence like a good paterfamilias.
I refer to my earlier blog Death by Black Hole and to my dutch blog Dies Irae.
Foto: European Space Agency (Rosetta mission) – license text can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/
No comments:
Post a Comment