In a rather unusual appeal to astronomers, NASA recently requested everyone to report any near-earth object with the potential to harm Planet Earth. The import of the message is clear: Scientists think that our present knowledge of asteroids is at best basic and we need to know about them more if we don’t want to go the dinosaurs way.
We are told that there is only one in a trillion chance of a rock the size that obliterated almost all life 66 million years ago smashing into the Earth anytime soon, astronomically speaking. This has made us earthlings complacent. Why bother about a catastrophe that is unlikely to happen in our lifetime or this century?
This was the thinking until February 2013 when an undetected 19.8-meter meteorite exploded over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk unleashing the force of 500,000 TNT, or 20 to 30 times more energy than was released from the atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima.
This happened when space scientists have been tracking another rock that harmlessly flew past the Earth several hours later. They could not explain how the one that exploded escaped detection.
If life on Earth is to be preserved, scientists obviously need to know more about these killer rocks flying around, especially those that have the Earth in their cross hairs, and, secondly, a way to deflect or break them into smaller parts, which can then be dealt with more easily.
NASA’s appeal goes to meet the first challenge — to detect the lethal asteroids. The agency’s scientists are working on the second task of deflecting the rocks through a nuclear strike.
Painstaking scientific research is expensive. NASA is an organization funded by the US government and its functioning is subject to funds allocated to it by Congress and targets fixed by the incumbent administration. Many of NASA’s ambitious goals have been scaled down under the current Obama administration.
After the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union, NASA seems to be the sole space research organization that is capable of taking the fight to the asteroids. Space research organizations of other nations in comparison are way behind and in some cases try more to showcase their national achievements.
It is not just America’s responsibility to fight for the survival of humanity and space research should not be subject to budgetary constraints of one country. There is an urgent need to create a world space research body with clearly defined goals and the best brains working for it.
The world has to be a little more serious as in this game, there is no restart button. We can’t start all over again.
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