Page 6
WORLD & NATION
Mar, i6, 2007
www.guilfordian.com
Greensboro. N.C.
»
United Nations develops Armageddon-style
asteroid contingency plan
NASA IS tracking
127 Near Earth Ob
jects (NEOs) that could
strike the planet. Not
all NEOs are large
enough to destroy life
on earth, but an aster
oid just a few hundred
meters wide could easily
wipe out a major city or
create an enormous
tsunami.
Reid Cranfill | Staff Writer
At the insistence of former astro
nauts, the United Nations has decided
to formulate an international action plan
to deal with rogue asteroids headed to
ward Earth. The treaty would delegate
responsibilities for stopping an asteroid,
set the policies
for what risks
could be taken
to prevent a
collision, and
coordinate re
lief efforts in
the event of a
strike.
The very
idea seems
fetched from
bad '90s ac
tion movies,
but currently
NASA is track
ing 127 Near
Earth Objects
(NEOs) that
could strike the
planet. Not all
NEOs are large
enough to de
stroy life on
Earth, but an asteroid just a few hundred
meters wide could easily wipe out a ma
jor city or create an enormous tsunami.
Rather than destroy any incoming as
teroid, plans call to deflect an NEO's tra
jectory a few degrees away from Earth.
"All you'd have to do is slow the ob
ject down just a few millimeters per sec
ond, and over time, you'd change its path
enough to where it'd miss (us)," said John
Yeoman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
to the BBC.
The asteroid, Apophis, which is due to
miss the Earth just barely in 2029, could
be deflected merely by having a one-ton
spaceship fly beside it for 12 days. The
gravity from the ship would be enough
to draw the asteroid away from the earth
by a planet's radius.
But such plans come with potentially
disastrous political consequences. In try
ing to deflect Apophis from possibly hit
ting Seattle, NASA's plan could acciden
tally destroy Beijing and provoke war
with China.
"It's important to understand when
you start to deflect an asteroid that cer
tain countries are going to have accept
an increase in risk to their populations
in order to take the risk to zero for ev
eryone," said Dr. Russell Schweickart to
the BBC.
Schweickart is an Apollo 9 astronaut
and founder of the Association of Space
Explorers (ASE), a society of astronauts
and cosmonauts that proposed the treaty
to the United Nations.
The ASE plans to have
a working protocol to
present to the United
Nations by 2009.
In the United
States, Congress has
changed NASA's
mandate to include
identifying potential
asteroid strikes, and
plans to invest in a
new network of tele
scopes to identify any
incoming asteroid
larger than 70 me
ters in diameter. Cur
rently, NASA
estimates
around 20,000
asteroids are
inbound that
have yet to be
identified.
"It all depends on how much
warning we have; there's a lot of
space out there," said assistant
professor of physics Don Smith.
"The real danger is if (an NEO)
isn't identified before it's too
close."
NASA's estimates require
at least seven years before
any deflection . mission
would be ready for launch,
and agencies that are more
conservative estimate 12
years at the earliest. With
the new telescope array, it
should be possible to give
such a mission the time it
would need to develop.
Still, the ASE feels that
having a set United Na
tions protocol before a
crisis develops could «
save crucial time in pre
paring a mission.
Schweickart told the BBC: "You have
to act when things look like they are go
ing to happen. If you wait until you know
for certain, it's too late."
Army grants waivers to criminals
Continued from page I
The increase in allowing crimi
nals calls into question some of the
military's practices, in particular their
"don't ask, don't tell" stance on homo
sexuality.
"That's just ridiculous, giving jobs
and guns to criminals when a person
who happens to be gay is willing to
take that job makes no sense," Febiger
said.
Aaron Belkin, director of the Michael
D. Palm Center, an institution which
researches the army's "don't ask, don't
tell" policy, also believes this situation
is ridiculous and dangerous.
"The chance that one of those indi
viduals is going to commit an atrocity
or disobey an order is higher," Belkin
told The New York Times.
Sophomore Saron Smith-Hardin
thinks that the increase in criminals al
lows people who might have attempted
murder as a civilian the chance to kill
in an environment where it is deemed
acceptable.
"My main concern is that some of
these people have attempted murder.
However, in the army you are expect
ed to kill, particularly during a war,
Smith-Hardin said.
On the other hand, joining the army
might have positive affects on convict
ed criminals.
"It's possible that there might be
benefits for the criminals who join. Go
ing into the army teaches and reinforc
es discipline," said Febiger.
Still, there are risks involved.
John D. Hutson, dean and president
of the Franklin Pierce Law Center, said
to The New York Times, "If you are
recruiting somebody who has demon
strated some sort of antisocial behav
ior and then you are a putting a gun
in their hands, you have to be awfully
careful about what you are doing."