Somewhere out there is a killer asteroid with our name on it

Tweet

Today there are more than 100 entries on NASA's list of asteroids that just might possible hit Earth, even if it's less than a one-in-a-million chance. One of them, called Apophis, currently has a risk rating of 1 in 45,000-serius enough to get people thinking about how to avoid a "cosmic Katrina". Chances are that Apophis will soon no longer be considered a threat, but what about those others? And what about the thousands of space rocks that are expected to be added to the list over the next few years?. Somewhere out there is a killer asteroid with our name on it, and scientists, astronauts, diplomats and space law experts are just statring to draw up a plan for dealing with itthat is, once we figure out wich asteroid it is. Experts on near-Earth asteroids laid out their current thinkingon impact threats today during a news briefing in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They broke the issue down into three key questions:* How we find potentially threatening asteroids and assess whether the threat is real? * What can we do if we determine there's a threat? * Who decides what to do?The first question is likely to get a lot more interesting: In 1998, just around the time that "Armageddon" and " Deep Impact" hit the movie theaters, Congress told NASA to find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects, or NEOs bigger than a half-mile (1 Kilometer) in diameter. So far, the Spaceguard Survey has cataloged more then 800 asteroids of the size, out of a projected population of 1,100. A couple of yars ago, Congress revised the goal, calling on NASA to find 90 percent of of the NEOs that are at list 460 feet (140 meters) wide. If one of that smaller class of asteroids were to hit Earth, it probably wouldn't wipe out civilization, as the 1-kilometer variety might -but it would devastate an area the size of, say, England or Northen California, said David Morrison of NASA's Ames Research Center.