Astronomy

space rock killed off much of
the life on Earth, including
the dinosaurs.
Humans now know of a
range of such impacts on our
planet, large and small. But
simply knowing about these
events will not make them
stop. So, to raise awareness
about Near-Earth Objects
(NEOs), Asteroid Day will
take place again in 2016. This
movement — whose founders
include German filmmaker
Grigorij Richters, astrophysicist
and Queen guitarist Brian
May, and Apollo astronaut
Rusty Schweickart — seeks to promote
asteroid discovery and tracking.
With this in mind, members of
Asteroid Day held a news conference in
February at the European Space Agency’s
ESTEC facility near Leiden, Netherlands,
to announce this year’s activities.
Richters led the conference, which
included live guest talks or recorded messages
from May; England’s Astronomer
Royal, Lord Martin Rees; astronautexplorers
Ed Lu, Tom Jones, and Chris
Hadfield; Bill Nye the Science Guy; and
asteroid experts Mark Boslough and
Patrick Michel.
This year, Asteroid Day will take place
June 30, the anniversary of Tunguska,
and celebrations will occur in a variety
of places. Central to the festivities will
be the Starmus Festival, occurring June
27–July 2 in Tenerife, Canary Islands. (For
more on Starmus see “Celebrating Stephen
Hawking’s legacy” in the April issue.)
Events also will take place in Barcelona,
Spain, at the Spanish National Research
Council; in San Francisco,
at the California Academy
of Sciences; in Vienna, at the
Natural History Museum;
in Seoul, South Korea, at the
Gwacheon National Science
Museum; and at many other
facilities throughout the world.
Asteroid Day wants to
include and help coordinate
as many groups and events
as possible. For information
on how to host your own
Asteroid Day event, visit http://
resources.asteroidday.org/
resources/getting-started-withyour-event.
For everything else about Asteroid Day,
see asteroidday.org.
Asteroid Day co-founder and Queen
guitarist Brian May speaks at the Asteroid
Day news conference about the importance
of discovering more Near-Earth Objects.
Asteroid Day co-founder Grigorij Richters
welcomes members of the media to the
announcement of Asteroid Day 2016.
Lord Martin Rees, England’s Astronomer
Royal, describes his keen interest in
tracking asteroids in the inner solar system.
Organizers stress that
Asteroid Day is not about fear.
Planetary scientists know of no
asteroid in near-Earth space as
large as the one that killed the
dinosaurs — and they have been
looking carefully. But even a
relatively small space rock, like
the one that shattered in the sky
above Chelyabinsk, would cause
a huge catastrophe if it struck
a major metropolitan area.
Planetary scientists believe we
have found 90 percent of NEOs
greater than 1km in diameter.
Now the challenge is to do the
same with smaller objects. They
already have found more than 9,000 of
these smaller space rocks.
Growing awareness among people all
over the world will help to support an
increase in research and discovery.
Says Rees: “The value of Asteroid Day is
that it can function as a way of raising public
awareness and therefore putting this
issue higher on the agenda so that when
politicians and others in a position to
deploy funds for scientific missions make
their decisions, they are aware there is a
serious case for doing more than is now
being done to remove the asteroid risk, survey
the sky for asteroids that could have
orbits that cross the Earth, and explore
technology that can be used to deflect one
on a path to impact Earth.”
“I became acutely aware of the risk
to all creatures on Earth from asteroid
impacts while watching Grig Richters’ film
51 Degrees North,” May adds. “This is an
important issue in the back of the minds of
all astronomers, but only recently could the
probabilities and effects be quantified. And
only recently has it become
within human capability to
begin to plan ways to prevent
such catastrophes.
“While making the music
for the film, I got to know
Grig, and we talked in depth
about the possibility of bringing
together the resources of
the whole world to focus on
asteroid impacts. The concept
of Asteroid Day was formed,
with the hope that we could
bring about a massive leap in
global awareness of this problem
— a problem that may now
have a solution.”
Won’t you join the movement to help
support NEO research?
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