Years of treading on the Earth's surface beneath our feet has led the human race to take for granted the power that our rock holds. It is this disregard for the power of rocks that has caused a void in the study of extraterrestrial rocks approaching Earth, even though it is inevitable that the Earth will be transformed if another rock hurtles toward it.
While movies like "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" have presented the possibility of Earth being transformed by another asteroid impact, the government has offered little support and invested little money in the tracking of potential impact asteroids. Until recently, Congress failed to realize that the possibility of an asteroid striking Earth is just a stone's throw away.
In late December 2004, a research team confirmed the discovery of Asteroid 2004 MN4, but the coverage of the finding was overshadowed by the tsunami and the holidays. This succulent rock, however, was nothing at which to scoff. The group determined that it would have a 1 in 38 chance of hitting the Earth. It would have the firepower equivalent to 10,000 megatons of dynamite, overpowering all of the nuclear weapons in the world and flattening Texas or a few European countries.
Today's technology enables astronomers to get a fix on asteroids that are greater than six miles in diameter and capable of causing global extinction. Astronomers never had measured anything as potentially dangerous to Earth as Asteroid 2004 MN4, and they have predicted that the impact would come on Friday the 13th in April 2029. After tracking down earlier observations, they determined that the asteroid trajectory would miss Earth, but only by 15,000 to 25,000 miles -- about one-tenth the distance to the moon. According to www.space.com, the asteroid received a rating of four on the Torino scale, which runs from one to 10. That remains the highest rating an asteroid has received under the system, in the range of "meriting concern."
The asteroid comes from the Aten subspecies, which includes those asteroids with an orbit between the Earth and the moon. While comets, made of dust and ice from the edge of the solar system, are much more difficult to predict as most are discovered nine months from impact, asteroids take elliptical paths that have a much greater possibility of intersecting that of Earth.
The size of the asteroid orbit will likely increase due to Earth's gravitational effects, and the object could get into a resonance with the Earth that would result in orbital matchups every five years or nine years and again as soon as 2034.
The discovery has highlighted the importance of the small band of professionals and amateurs who track potential impact asteroids and the ill-funded international system designed to track rogue extraterrestrial rocks. The importance of the apocalyptic potential of asteroids was realized in 1980 with the research of Luis and Walter Alvarez describing the Chicxulub impact that likely caused the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago.
Astronomer David Morrison of NASA's Ames Research Center used to believe that the number of people around the world interested in this type of research was equivalent to one shift of McDonald's employees in one restaurant. Today he claims there is the equivalent of two shifts devoted to the cause.
The oft-explored technique of blasting an approaching asteroid off of its path has come into question. It's possible that a bomb could break the asteroid into large radioactive chunks capable of transforming huge stretches of Earth into an atomic dump. It's also possible that the explosion could deflect the asteroid without destroying it, putting it on a future collision course. Any nuclear strategy would require the stockpiling of massive doomsday weapons. There's always the option of creating an international garrison state, but building bunkers to house billions of people and returning to Cold War mentality remains unconsidered on priority lists.
The B612 Foundation currently is trying to prove in a mission that a "tugboat" spacecraft can dock with a near-Earth asteroid and alter its speed enough to change its orbit. But B612 and the European Space Agency have little money to spend on such projects. Even NASA, at $4 million a year, does strikingly little to prepare for an inevitable doomsday despite being the big spender for near-Earth object research.
Some researchers currently are calling for the flying of a small interceptor mission to plant a transponder on 2004 MN4 that would constantly radio its location, tagging it like an endangered species. NASA maintains a database to plot and record orbits for all known near-Earth objects and contributes money to the Minor Planet Center and to sky surveys underway at telescopes in Arizona, California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Australia, according to the Washington Post.
Bipartisan support has begun to lend its ear to the controversy surrounding 2029, The Washington Post reported. A push began this year in Congress that was led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a conservative, and former House Science Committee chairman George E. Brown Jr. (D-Calif.), known as one of Congress's most liberal members before his death in 1999. Rohrabacher introduced the George E. Brown Jr. Near-Earth Object Survey Act on March 1, calling for the spending of $40 million on a two-year start-up to survey every object 100 meters (328 feet) across or larger, of which there may be 300,000. There are currently 3,265 near-Earth objects of all sizes.
The general public seems to respond only to oncoming disaster, and this disregard for science is probably most disappointing part of living in urbanized society. Most humans today have little contact with the world outside of their cubicles, and they have little respect for mother nature's power. She's a fiesty lady, and until our own Deep Impact is on the horizon, it's going to be a struggle to maintain public support.
Astronomy is an ever-growing field of study, and to have only two McDonald's shifts-worth of researchers tracking these rocky assassins is simply murderous. The money has started to flow to projects to prevent catastrophe, thanks to bipartisan efforts in Congress, but until a worldwide organization is founded, money will continue to be wasted on administrative concerns instead of saving humanity. We need an International League of Rock Watchers, and we need it today.
While I believe tagging asteroids is a great technique for research, sometimes I wonder if it's worth the trouble to save an urbanized Earth. Should we really change the natural progression of our planet? The transformation the Earth has undergone at the hands of humans leaves an asteroid impact as just about the only event that could return the Earth to a semi-natural state. But are human innovations such as cars, skyscrapers, and videogames part of its natural state?
We're the next dinosaurs, and we're going to have to face that fact at some point. To think, if something had prevented the asteroid from impacting our planet 65 million years ago, the human race may have never emerged. Perhaps we should let nature take its course for once. But that would be inhuman, wouldn't it? The governments of the world would be committing billions of assisted suicides. The Earth has feelings, too, and I'm sure it doesn't want another gaping wound from another cataclysmic collision.
Rocks are recording our present, and they hold within them the histories of our past and the power to change the future of humanity. To go about our lives without giving them the respect they deserve places us on a collision course for disaster. One day, an asteroid will literally rock our world. Should we stop it? Since I'm not a dinosaur, I guess I'll vote "yes." The next time you step outside, remember to embrace Earth, because it won't be here one day ... and neither will we.
Ryan McElveen can be reached at ryanmcelveen@cavalierdaily.com.
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