CANADA: Campaigners including Brian May and Lord Rees are marking Asteroid Day by raising awareness of the threat posed to the planet by speeding space rocks.
The search for deadly asteroids that could slam into Earth must be speeded up 100-fold to help protect the future of life on Earth, according to an influential group of scientists, astronauts and rock stars.
The call for action comes as experts around the world take part in Asteroid Day, an event on Tuesday marked by a series of talks and debates aimed at raising awareness of the existential threat posed by hurtling rocks from the heavens.
Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, and Brian May, from the rock group Queen, added their names to the 100X declaration, which calls for a rapid acceleration in human efforts to find and track potentially dangerous asteroids. Other signatories including Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox and Eileen Collins, the first female commander of Nasa’s space shuttle.
“The aim is to ramp up public awareness and the awareness of governments to the fact that we are under threat from a meteor strike,” May told the Guardian. “It’s been made light of, and we’ve seen some great films, like Bruce Willis saving the day, but it is a very serious threat.”
Asteroid Day falls on the anniversary of an asteroid strike in 1908 that saw a 40 metre-wide lump of space rock enter the atmosphere over Tunguska in Siberia at about 33,500 miles per hour. The rock exploded mid-air and released the energy of a large hydrogen bomb, which flattened 2000 sq km of conifer forest.
Were an asteroid of the same size to slam into the atmosphere over London, the blast could destroy much of the capital within the M25. People in cities as far away as Oxford could be burned by the intense heat released in the explosion. In Scotland, the same blast would still have the force to blow peoples’ hats off.
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