Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Asteroids

FishyJay sent me a wonderful link, which although it may be a bit tedious for Zorro, will probably be of special interest to everyone else.

Washington - The United States is doing little to defend the planet against potentially devastating asteroids and is not doing the basic searches that Congress has ordered, according to a report released on Friday.

While most of the really big and obvious threats are being found, almost nothing is being done to find the smaller objects that are arguably a more likely threat, the strongly worded report from the National Academy of Sciences said.

"It means we are not looking for the small ones which can cause huge damage on earth," astronomer Mike A'Hearne of the University of Maryland, who helped chair the committee that wrote the report, said in a telephone interview.

I've got an idea. How about if gun owners, as a public service, you know to give something back, work in shifts monitoring the heavens. We could have tens of millions of heavily armed folks searching for the tell-tale signs of meteors and asteroids entering the atmosphere. If a fiery ball threatens, they could easily blast that sucker to smithereens, and thereby save the planet. Talk about a grandiose and noble mission. Who could resist it?

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