Please join us in an informative lecture by the
University of Hawaii Pan-STARRS Telescope team on the dangers of
Asteroids, and what is being done to protect ourselves from this danger.
Location:
Southern Oregon University - Main Science Lecture
Hall
Time/Date:
6:45 PM on Thursday, June 5 2008
Admission:
Free and open to the public
ABSTRACT:
The Earth is constantly bombarded from space by chunks of rock called
asteroids. Most of them are too small to produce any damage at the
surface of the Earth but they increase the mass of the Earth by several
tons every day. Some of the dust in your living room is actually the
burnt and melted remnants of these impacts. While the dust might be a
nuisance, a collision with a larger asteroid would really wreck your
day.
An asteroid just a half-mile across could strike the Earth at any time
at 45,000 miles per hour - that's 20 times faster and a 100 million
million times more massive than a bullet. The combined effects of the
impact energy, blast wave, earthquakes, tsunamis, crop failures, and
dust loading in the atmosphere would likely kill about one quarter of
the world's population.
I will tell you what astronomers at the University of Hawaii's Institute
for Astronomy are doing to reduce this risk, how we're finding the
dangerous asteroids, and what we'd do if we found one that was going to
hit. The odds are only about 1 in a 1000 that it will happen in your
lifetime so if you're a gambler you might choose not to heed this
warning. But if you're like most of us who purchase life, home, and
health insurance, who think that the FAA does a good job of reducing the
risk of plane crashes, and believe that building codes save lives in
earthquake-prone regions, then you might like to think about the
relatively small cost of insuring our planet against an asteroid impact.
