US ups Earth’s protection

Incoming asteroid, comets

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, June 21, (Agencies): The US government is stepping up efforts to protect the planet from incoming asteroids that could wipe out entire regions or even continents.

The National Science and Technology Council released a report Wednesday calling for improved asteroid detection, tracking and deflection. NASA is participating, along with federal emergency, military, White House and other officials.

For now, scientists know of no asteroids or comets heading our way. But one could sneak up on us, and that’s why the government wants a better plan.

NASA’s planetary defense officer, Lindley Johnson, said scientists have found 95 percent of all these near-Earth objects measuring one kilometer (two-thirds of a mile) or bigger. But the hunt is still on for the remaining 5 percent and smaller rocks that could still inflict big damage.

Altogether, NASA has catalogued 18,310 objects of all sizes. Slightly more than 800 are 460 feet (140 meters) or bigger.

There’s no quick solution if a space rock is suddenly days, weeks or even months from striking, according to Johnson. But such short notice would give the world time, at least, to evacuate the area it might hit, he said.

Ground telescopes are good at picking up asteroids zooming into the inner solar system and approaching from the night side of Earth, Johnson said. What’s difficult to detect are

forests have been fragmented, degraded or simply chopped down since 2000, according to the analysis of satellite imagery.

Average daily loss over the first 17 years of this century was more than 200

French beekeeper Thomas Le Glatin inspects his beehive frames on June 19, in Ploerdut, western France. Thomas and Claire, French beekeepers in Brittany, are being forced to reduce to ashes ‘90 percent of their hives and a year of production’. Helpless, they call for a collective awareness about the dangers of beeharming pesticides. (AFP)

rocks that have already zipped past the sun and are heading out of the solar system, approaching from the day side. That’s apparently what happened in 2013 when an asteroid about 66 feet (20 meters) in size suddenly appeared and exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging thousands of buildings and causing widespread injuries.

An asteroid double or even triple in size exploded over Tunguska, Russia, in 1908, leveling 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest. According to the report released Wednesday, casualties could be in the millions if a similar event struck New York City.

A giant space rock wiped out the dinosaurs when it smacked into Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula some 65 million years ago.

Johnson stressed it would take years to attempt to turn away a potential killer asteroid — several years to build a spacecraft then another few years to get it to the target. Ideally, he’d like at least 10 years’ advance notice.

France should invest more in surveillance of outer space to ensure it never becomes an arena for future wars, the country’s defence minister said on Thursday.

Days after US President Donald Trump said he was ordering the creation of a sixth branch of the US military to focus on space, Florence Parly said France, a nuclear power, believed space could become the site of future conflicts.

square kilometres (75 square miles).

“Degradation of intact forest represents a global tragedy, as we are systematically destroying a crucial foundation of climate stability,” said Frances Seymour, a senior distinguished fellow at the World Resources Institute (WRI), and a contributor to the research, presented this week at a conference in Oxford. (AFP)

T-Rex couldn’t stick out tongue:

The Tyrannosaurus rex is crowned the “lizard king” of the dinosaurs, a historically fierce meat-eater often depicted lashing out its tongue. But researchers said Wednesday this would have been anatomically impossible.

That’s because the long-extinct T-Rex likely had a tongue that was affixed to the bottom of its mouth, much like an alligator or crocodile, said the study in the journal PLOS ONE.

“They’ve been reconstructed the wrong way for a long time,” said co-author Julia Clarke, a professor in the school of geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. (AFP)