A ‘meteoric’ impact

Scarborough Forty Club’s topis last week was ‘Making an Impact’. Speaker, Alan Pearson, certainly did that with his maiden talk to the club.

Alan’s talk explained that it is only recently that mankind has become aware of the frequency of meteoric impacts on the earth. The talk began with a history of the Barringer crater, over 1km wide, in Arizona, followed by the Tunguska meteor in Siberia, which exploded with the power of 180 nuclear bombs, flattening trees for many miles.

Alan explained that in the 1960s Eugene Shoemaker worked for NASA on the Apollo missions and discovered crystalline structures typical of meteoric impact in the Lunar samples. Thanks to Gene’s pioneering work, others were able to identify the crater that wiped out the dinosaurs. Many scientists now believe an extinction event occurred in North America, caused by a meteorite impact about 12,800 years ago. The latest meteor was in 2013, exploding 18 miles above Russia, its shockwave breaking windows in several cities below.

NASA tracks asteroids larger than 1km but some arrive unpredictably from outside the solar system and it is quite likely earth will be hit in the next 30 to 50 years. Any attempt to destroy them with missiles would scatter debris into unpredictable orbits, but, a spacecraft carrying a large fold-out mirror may be able to focus the sun on one side, causing the comet to vent gas, thus changing its course away from the earth.

Alan concluded his startling talk by asking if Europe or the USA were hit would Russia or China take advantage of the devastation to take over? Members debated if we should be worried about any of this or just accept our fate? Others thought that we might destroy ourselves before then by war, disease or a super-volcano event. Alan was confident that now we are aware of the problem we will find an answer. He said that some billionaires are investing heavily in establishing life on Mars.

Mr Staniforth gave the vote of thanks for an excellent high-quality presentation. Tonight’s guest speaker is Roger Burnett talking about Scarborough’s horticultural history. Contact 01723 354813 for more details.