OBAMA IS WARNED OF ASTEROID IMPACT THREAT ABOVE: WARNING: President Barack Obama

OBAMA IS WARNED OF ASTEROID IMPACT THREAT
ABOVE: WARNING: President Barack Obama
19th February 2009
By Jack Bellamy

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NASA is sending spacecraft to hunt down and destroy asteroids that could devastate Earth.

The giant space rocks collect in “gravity holes” where the gravity fields of our planet and the Sun cancel each other out, and one could be heading our way.

Scientists have told President Barack Obama that unless the US takes steps, we could face the sort of doomsday blast that wiped out dinosaurs 65million years ago.

The operation mirrors the plot of 1998 Hollywood blockbuster film Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis, 53.

Astrophysicist Professor Richard Gott, of Princeton University, New Jersey, has warned about the dangers of the Lagrangian points – or L4 and L5 for short – threatening Earth.

He said: “I think you certainly might find a whole population of objects at L4 and L5. If we see something big in there it would be like a ticking timebomb.

“If we see a big asteroid there it might be worth taking it out pre-emptively ­– and by that I mean blowing it to pieces.”

Later this year two spacecraft from NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) will move through L4 and L5 to warn us if a major collision is on the cards.

STEREO’s project scientist Dr Michael Kaiser said: “These are big regions of space. It’s going to take STEREO months to travel through them.”

A team of stargazers now face the painstaking task of trying to spot Lagrangian asteroids.

They will appear as little more than dots moving past a background of thousands of stars.

Team member Dr Richard Harrison, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxon, said: “Wouldn’t it be spectacular if we backed past an asteroid and saw it come creeping into view around the camera?”
[link to www.dailystar.co.uk]