<\/p>\n
Peter Garretson<\/a> from the Lifeboat Advisory Board appears in the latest edition of New Scientist:<\/p>\n \u201cIT LOOKS inconsequential enough, the faint little spot moving leisurely across the sky. The mountain-top telescope that just detected it is taking it very seriously, though. It is an asteroid, one never seen before. Rapid-survey telescopes discover thousands of asteroids every year, but there\u2019s something very particular about this one. The telescope\u2019s software decides to wake several human astronomers with a text message they hoped they would never receive. The asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. It is the size of a skyscraper and it\u2019s big enough to raze a city to the ground. Oh, and it will be here in three days.<\/p>\n Far-fetched it might seem, but this scenario is all too plausible. Certainly it is realistic enough that the US air force recently brought together scientists, military officers and emergency-response officials for the first time to assess the nation\u2019s ability to cope, should it come to pass.<\/p>\n They were asked to imagine how their respective organisations would respond to a mythical asteroid called Innoculatus striking the Earth after just three days\u2019 warning. The asteroid consisted of two parts: a pile of rubble 270 metres across which was destined to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa, and a 50-metre-wide rock heading, in true Hollywood style, directly for Washington DC.<\/p>\n The exercise, which took place in December 2008, exposed the chilling dangers asteroids pose. Not only is there no plan for what to do when an asteroid hits, but our early-warning systems \u2014 which could make the difference between life and death \u2014 are woefully inadequate. The meeting provided just the wake-up call organiser Peter Garreston<\/a> had hoped to create. He has long been concerned about the threat of an impact. \u201cAs a taxpayer, I would appreciate my air force taking a look at something that would be certainly as bad as nuclear terrorism in a city, and potentially a civilisation-ending event,\u201d he says.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the entire article at New Scientist<\/a>. Read the NASA NEO report \u201cNatural Impact Hazard Interagancy Deliberate Planning Exercise After Action Report<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Peter Garretson from the Lifeboat Advisory Board appears in the latest edition of New Scientist: \u201cIT LOOKS inconsequential enough, the faint little spot moving leisurely across the sky. The mountain-top telescope that just detected it is taking it very seriously, though. It is an asteroid, one never seen before. Rapid-survey telescopes discover thousands of asteroids [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-defense","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65144,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/65144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}