GARDEN GROVE, California – It is past time to get serious about planetary defense, experts say. The threat of Earth being on the receiving end of a cosmic calling card in the form of an asteroid or comet is real.

Despite increasing scientific agreement regarding the danger posed by near-Earth objects smashing into our planet, governmental steps to deal with the issue are missing-in-action. At present, only patchwork and under-funded research efforts are underway to robustly detect, track, catalog and plot out strategies to thwart menacing asteroids and comets that place Earth at risk.

First Strike or Asteroid Impact? The Urgent Need to Know the Difference An international confab of experts is taking part in The Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids here this week and sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

The four-days of discussion were kicked off by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, Chairman of the House Science Committee's Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee

Rohrabacher noted that it took the attacks of Sept. 11 for the country to focus on global terrorism. "I hope that it won’t take that type of catastrophe for us to start paying attention to the threats of near-Earth objects," he said.

The lawmaker said the political reaction to the worries over space rocks has garnered "a very tepid response" to date, noting that money spent so far on the issue has been "a pittance."

President George W. Bush’s new visionary blueprint for NASA – including a human return to the Moon and sending astronauts to Mars – was saluted by Rohrabacher. That plan, he added, can also support planetary defense objectives.

"The Moon could well be a base of operations that we could use as a means to defend this planet in a timely way, and a more effective way, against near Earth objects," Rohrabacher explained.

Taking a "let’s get going," roll-up-your sleeves attitude, Rohrabacher said there is need to start now in readying the technologies necessary to deflect an Earth-threatening object. "What we need to do is build from right here…this moment. The people in this room can save the planet."

Warning time

There is no question that an asteroid has Earth’s name on it, astronomers agree. But where the rock is and when that impact is going to occur is unknown, said David Morrison of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the space agency's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.

NASA now supports -- in collaboration with the United States Air Force -- the Spaceguard Survey and its goal of discovering and tracking 90 percent of the Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) with a diameter greater than about one-half mile (1 kilometer) by 2008. If one of these big bruisers were to strike our planet, it would spark catastrophic global effects that would include severe regional devastation and global climate change.

By charting the whereabouts of these celestial objects, it is anticipated that decades of warning time is likely if one of the large-sized space boulders was found to be on a heading that intersects Earth.

But a uniform message from the experts attending this week’s planetary defense gathering is extending the survey to spot smaller objects, down to some 500 feet (150 meters) in diameter. These asteroids can wreak havoc too, but on a more localized scale.

For instance, if one of these smaller asteroids were to strike along the California coast, millions of people might be killed, Morrison said. A little further to the east, he added, "a nice crater out in the desert" would become a tourist attraction.

In identifying ways to deal with hazardous asteroids, a first order of business is gaining a better understanding of the enemy. That is, are they fluffy stuff, constituting a rubble pile, or are they tough-as-nails slabs of iron? Along with these physical properties, astronomers want to know more about their overall shape, rotation rate, and whether an object might play host to a smaller companion body.

Developing a robust deflection scheme so an asteroid doesn't hit Earth means taking into account these factors and a host of other issues, said Don Yeomans, a leading asteroid and comet scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Developing a viable mitigation campaign, Yeomans explained, demands three prerequisites: "You need to find them early. You need to find them early. And we need to find them early."

Friendly-fire

Now being discussed is a way to flex, test, and calibrate present day computer and hardware tools to first detect and then keep a trained eye on a potential Earth impactor.

There are currently three Earth-impactors en route. But don’t worry. It’s all friendly fire.

NASA’s Genesis spacecraft is headed this way in September of this year. So too is the Stardust spacecraft in January 2006, as will be a Japanese asteroid sample mission in June 2007. All three are designed to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and touch down on terra firma, each carrying a precious cargo of scooped-up specimens.

"So we do have current impactors coming back," Yeomans said. While still in the preliminary discussion stage, the idea is to use these incoming spacecraft to shake out coordinated observations, sharpen orbit calculation skills, and help fine-tune procedures now in place for detecting and tracking asteroids and comets, he told SPACE.com .

Yeomans said about 40 objects at least 3 feet (1 meter) in size enter the Earth’s atmosphere every year. Some of these incoming objects have been observed by space-based infrared and visible sensors and other ground-based detection devices operated by the U.S. military and other government agencies, he said.

"They have indeed made many of these observations available to scientific investigators," Yeomans said. "It would be nicer to get these things [the data] a little more quickly than 3-4 months down the road,’ he added, with near-simultaneous flow of information about such events seen as ideal.

Largest meteorite fall

Space and ground sensors proved useful last year in studying a major meteor explosion in Earth’s atmosphere. The event also brought home the point of how a natural event can take on the guise of a human made terrorist act.

Dee Pack, Director of The Aerospace Corporation’s Remote Sensing Department, detailed a large-scale meteorite fall that occurred over Park Forest, Illinois on March 27, 2003.

"This is the largest meteorite fall over a densely populated area in modern history," Pack and a team of fellow specialists reported at the meeting. The initial mass of the object is now estimated to be nearly 8 tons.

The explosion took place at nearly midnight local time. Fragments of the airbursting meteorite cut through several roofs. The explosive disintegration of the object lit up the night sky to daylight levels. Sonic booms were heard over a wide area. Numbers of meteorites resulting from the event were recovered, later classified as bits of a stony space rock.

Making it all the more jittery for those folks in the fall zone, the object exploded during Operation Iraqi Freedom, with many witnesses worried this natural event was some kind of massive explosion or nuclear event.

Pack and his colleagues contend: "These large meteors, or superbolides, are of concern to the Department of Defense due to their ability to mimic nuclear events." This type of extraordinary Earth-crossing object serves to train global observers to better recognize and characterize these naturally occurring huge explosive events.

Who do you call?

A clear and present danger for those studying planetary defense is the lack of any chain-of-command to take on the duties of dealing with the prospect of disruptive collisions from asteroids and comets.

This "who do you call?" factor deserves immediate attention, said Michael Belton of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives in Tucson, Arizona.

Belton detailed the findings of a NASA-sponsored 2002 workshop. It brought together over 75 top scientists, engineers and military experts from the United States, Europe, and Japan to review the science behind mitigating hazardous comets and asteroids.

A central finding: There is lack of any assigned responsibility to any national or international governmental organization to prepare for a disruptive collision. There is absence of any authority to act in preparation for some future collision-mitigation attempt, Belton said.

The 2002 workshop did recommend that NASA be assigned the duty to advance work in beefing up the science and ability to respond to an imminent collision with an asteroid or comet nucleus. Furthermore, the now-in progress Spaceguard Survey should be extended to scope out possible impactors down to 655 feet (200 meters) in size.

In addition, Belton said that there is need for the Defense Department to more rapidly communicate surveillance data on natural airbursts. And lastly, there’s need for governmental policy makers to formulate a chain of responsibility for action in the event a threat to the Earth becomes known.

"In other words…there isn’t anybody to call. There is nobody there. And there’s nobody with authority…nobody with any resources," Belton said. "And we need to correct that.

A naked-eye comet - one visible to the unaided eye without telescope or binoculars - is an enjoyable sight, particularly for the brighter comets. On average, a naked-eye comet graces our skies about once every two years.

However, most remain fairly faint or appear close to the Sun as seen from Earth, such that even experienced observers may require binoculars to spot them. Only rarely do two relatively bright naked-eye comets appear simultaneously. Such an event will take place in April and May of 2004, when sky gazers will feast their eyes upon both Comets.[...]

Scientists are interested in comets for a number of reasons. "Comets are thought to have formed in the outer reaches of the solar system, and may thus contain rock and ices that date back billions of years. Also, comet tails are indicators of the solar wind and have helped us learn about the inner solar system. And not least, comets are known to hit planets from time to time, including Earth, so we need to keep an eye out for potential impactors," said Green. [...]

"Comets do a lot of things that are unpredictable," said Green. [...]

As June opens, both comets will fade as they speed ever farther from both the Sun and the Earth. Yet if current predictions hold, the brief but enjoyable appearances of Comet NEAT and Comet LINEAR will be remembered for years to come

Scientists have cast doubt on the well-established theory that a single, massive asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

New data suggests the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, supposedly created by the collision, predates the extinction of the dinosaurs by about 300,000 years.

The authors say this impact did not wipe out the creatures, rather two or more collisions could have been responsible .

Instead, they believe a cooling of the global climate shortly followed by a period of greenhouse warming placed enormous stress on the dinosaurs.

This warming could have been kicked off by carbon dioxide released by a massive eruption of lava seen today in the Deccan traps of India. [...]

"When the K-T boundary impact finally came, it hit an already stressed community. To use a cliche, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Almost anything could have wiped them out at that point," Professor Keller told BBC News Online. [...]

For a few hours on January 13, 2004, astronomers thought a 30-meter wide asteroid might hit the Earth. The asteroid AL00667 seemed to be on a direct course for the Northern Hemisphere, due to strike in less than two days.

A 30-meter asteroid is larger than a tennis court. An asteroid of this size would have broken up in the atmosphere, creating a one-megaton blast. If it exploded high enough, the asteroid probably wouldn't have caused any damage. The shock wave from the blast would have become a sonic boom by the time it reached the ground. But an explosion lower in the atmosphere could have caused considerable damage.

Astronomers who knew about the asteroid believed an impact was not likely, but they couldn't rule out the possibility, either. So they faced a dilemma - should they warn others about something that could end up passing us by?

President Bush was preparing to make a speech at NASA headquarters the next day. He planned to talk about sending a man back to the moon and then on to Mars, but news of an approaching asteroid may have caused him to make a very different kind of announcement.

The asteroid, which has since been renamed 2004 AS1, actually passed by at about 12 million kilometers away, or 32 times the Earth-moon distance. The asteroid also turned out to be 10 times larger than first thought (about 300 meters wide - or about the height of the Eiffel Tower).

Some recent news reports say that Clark Chapman, an astronomer with the Southwest Research Institute, was moments away from calling President Bush and warning him about the asteroid. Chapman, however, adamantly denies this.

"It is absurd to think that any of us in the loop would have called the White House," states Chapman. "Hell, we wouldn't even have gotten through. All I was thinking about was recommending to Don Yeomans, who is in charge of JPL's [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's] Near Earth Object Program office, that he inform people at NASA. It would have had to go through several layers of hierarchy before it got to anyone who would have been in a position to go higher than NASA. And Yeomans says that he wouldn't have acted on my advice, preferring to wait for further confirmation of the object."

The difference between the initial estimates and the final result highlights the difficulty of monitoring the skies for small Near Earth Objects (NEOs). For 200 4 AS1, astronomers knew the asteroid could be either big and far away, or small and close by.

"It's rather like noticing something in the sky out of your car window that appears to be moving along with you," explains Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute. "It could be a bird close to your car flying along at close to the same speed, or it could be a plane in the distance that only seems to be pacing your car."

Over the next few weeks after January 13, the asteroid came even closer to Earth, but it still passed many times farther away than the moon. There are many asteroids that routinely pass much closer to the Earth, says Harris, and asteroids the size and distance of 2004 AS1 are "a dime a dozen. " [...]

Although there are no current plans to establish a program to track the numerous small NEOs, Chapman says there have been proposals to do so. Such surveys would be able to track asteroids in the 150 to 500 meter range, and would find even smaller asteroids as well.

An Amazing Disturbance In Jupiter's Clouds.....

It is a very elongated, bluish streak that runs along the interface of the dark South Equatorial Belt.

The first hint that that something unusual was taking place in the cloudy Jovian atmosphere came from Spanish amateur when he reported that a small, bicolored feature was formingt in the Southern Hemisphere a little over 2 weeks ago. NOW, this disturbance has stretched, what loo ks like, right around the planet

At the moment it's too early to be sure of the nature of this disturbance or its potential evolution. The wide band shown on the photograph could, quite easily measure, 3-4 times the diameter of the Earth

Although Jupiter has, in the past, produced some unusual upper cloud features, nothing like this has ever been seen before

A meteor streaked across the skies over the Susitna River Valley on Tuesday night, producing a bluish fireball seen by people in Homer and Anchorage, according to the National Weather Service.

Two witnesses reported seeing the burn last for six or seven seconds about 10:20 p.m., said meteorologist Dave Vonderheide.

"It was unusually bright," he said.

Based on their reports, Vonderheide estimated that the object entered Earth's atmosphere somewhere over Montana Creek and moved southwest toward Skwentna before fading from sight. [...]

March 5, 2004 — Perhaps it was not Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern that sparked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the downtown area and claimed 300 lives.

New research lends credence to an alternative explanation: The fire, along with less-publicized and even more deadly blazes the same night in upstate Wisconsin and Michigan, was the result of a comet fragment crashing into Earth's atmosphere.

The comet theory has been around — and most often discarded — since at least 1883, but Robert Wood, a retired McDonnell Douglas physicist, said never before has the orbital parameters of the rogue comet been taken into consideration.

The likely suspect, in Wood's eyes, is a fragment from Biela's Comet, which had been circling the sun every six years and nine months before a close encounter with Jupiter caused it to break into two large fragments in 1845. During its next passage, astronomers noted a 1.5-million mile, 15-day gap between the two pieces.

Wood said his analysis of the fragments' positions during subsequent orbits shows that Jupiter's gravity again affected their speed and trajectory, sending the smaller fragment on a path toward Earth that ended in October 1871. He presented his findings at a conference last week titled "Planetary Defense: Protecting Earth from Asteroids," held in Garden Grove, Calif.

Wood cited eyewitness reports of spontaneous ignitions, lack of smoke and "fire balloons" falling from the sky to bolster his theory. If the fire had been caused by comet debris, which is believed to have consisted of small pieces of frozen methane, acetylene or other highly combustible chemicals, it also would explain the cause of the fires blazing north of Chicago, which wiped out 2,000 people and burned 4 million acres of farm and prairie lands.

The deceased included many who showed no signs of being burned, Wood said. "This would be consistent with either the absence of oxygen or the presence of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide above lethal levels," — a rare — but not unprecedented — situation in large forest fires.

In all, over a 24-hour period, an area of land the size of Connecticut was burned. Wood speculates the main body of the comet crashed into Lake Michigan, with peripheral fragments causing the fires in Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan.

NASA is among a handful of agencie s and organizations working on cataloging potentially threatening near-Earth asteroids and comets. What would be done about any threatening asteroids, however, remains the domain of science fiction.

"What's important about these findings," Wood said, "is that they show you people can actually get killed from something from out of space."

PLANETARY DEFENSE CONFERENCE PART 1: DEFINING THE THREAT

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif), one of the most influential members of the U.S. Congress in matters affecting space and science, gave the opening keynote address. Comparing the general apathy about the impact hazard with the public feeling about terrorism before 9/11, he expressed the hope that it would not require a similar catastrophe to alert people to the need to take action to protect the planet from impacts. He also compared the impact situation with global warming. He feels that the impact t hreat is better defined, and that real remedies are on the table, as opposed to global warming where it is not at clear what needs to be done or how to accomplish it.

In addition to the current Spaceguard Survey to predict impacts that could cause a global catastrophe, Rohrabacher urged that we also deal with more frequent threats from smaller impacts. He feels that it is unacceptable for us to face the possibility of an impact that could kill millions without taking action to counter this threat. He asserted that the people in this room can save the planet, and that what we are starting is a long-term program that may not come to fruition for several decades.

Congressmen Rohrabacher addressed the issue of gaining public support. He feels that an increased emphasis on the asteroid impact threat is consistent with the President's new space policy initiative. The Moon can provide a base of operations for dealing with asteroids as well as for future human flights to Mars. He stressed that the first imperative is to look up, to search for potential impactors, describing the legislation he recently introduced to authorize $20 million per year for NASA for each of the next two fiscal years to search for sub-km NEAs. [...]

In another keynote, Oliver Morton (London) provided historical context. The current interest in impacts represents a real change. Astronomy is the most predictive scie nce but is disassociated from terrestrial affairs. From the 18th century, astronomers have emphasized this distance.

Special efforts were made to demystify comets and allay public fear of comets. From the mid ninetieth century, geologists adopted a strictly uniformitarian approach in which catastrophic events were not considered. These ideas have persisted until recently, for example in the New York Times editorial (April 7 1985) which said in the context of the proposed KT impact: 'Astronomers should leave to astrologers the task of seeking the cause of earthly events in the stars. Not until well into the second half of 20th century were either astronomers or geologists willing to consider possible role of impacts. Science fiction was slightly ahead (Heinlein: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966. Blish & Knight: A Torrent of Faces, 1967. Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama, 1973. Niven & Pournelle: Lucifer's Hammer, 1977).

Only after the Alvarez paper on the KT impact (1980) did these ideas start to become respectable. The KT provided a colorful story about breaking a paradigm, catastrophes, dinosaurs and environmental change. Now we are in a new situation, trying to popularize the idea of the hazard of impacts. As public interest grows it naturally focuses not on what is the greatest danger but on what is the most likely event. Also, the post 9/11 world is concerned with what are very small events by astronomical standards. We should accept this and use it. [...]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amateur astronomers could receive awards of $3,000 for discovering and tracking near-Earth asteroids under legislation approved by the House Wednesday.

"Given the vast number of asteroids and comets that inhabits Earth's neighborhood, greater efforts for tracking and monitoring these objects are critical," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., sponsor of the legislation that passed 404-1. [...]

There is a modern-day hazard, threatening the existence of civilization, from impacts of comets and asteroids larger than about 1.5 km diameter.  The average annual world fatality rate is similar to that due to significant accidents (for instance, airliner crashes) and natural disasters (e.g. floods), although impact events are much rarer and the deaths per impact event are much greater. (Smaller, more frequent impacts can cause regional catastrophes from tsunamis of unprecedented scale at intervals similar to the duration of recorded human history.)  

As the telescopic Spaceg uard Survey census of Near Earth Asteroids advances, numerical simulations of the dynamical and collisional evolution of asteroids and comets has also become robust, defining unambiguously past rates of Earth impact of larger, more dangerous cosmic bodies.  

What are very tiny risks for impacts during a human lifetime become certainties on geological timescales. Widely reported errors in predictions of possible impacts during the next century have no bearing on the certainty that enormous impacts have happened in the past.  The magnitudes and qualitative features of environmental consequences of impacts of objects of various sizes are increasingly well understood.  

Prime attributes of impacts, not duplicated by any other natural processes, are:  (a) extreme suddenness, providing little opportunity for escape and no chance for adaptation, (b) globally pervasive, and (c) unlimited potential (for K/T-boundary-scale impacts and larger) for overwhelming destruction of the life-sustaining characteristics of the fragile ecosphere, notwithstanding the rather puny evidence for impacts in the geological record.

 A civilization-ending impact would be an environmental and human catastrophe of wholly unprecedented proportions.  K/T-scale impacts, of which there must have been at least several during the Phanerozoic (past 0.5 Gyr), are 1,000 times still more destructive.  No other plausible, known natural (or man-made) processes can approach such catastrophic potential. [...]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Hubble space telescop e captured an image of a distant star that bears resemb lance to the famous Vincent van Gogh painting "Starry Night", NASA and the European Space Agency announced.

The spectacular image taken February 8 showed the star, V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon), surrounded by an expanding halo of light "complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometers of interstellar space", a statement from the agencies said.

"The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago," the statement added, describing the image as "nature's own piece of performance art".

The outburst event from V838 Mon, located 20,000 light years away from Earth, is probably the source of the dust haze which it illuminates. [...]

Two huge stones, more than 20 meters across, came crashing down on either side of a home in Kvam Township Tuesday morning. The rocks stopped only few meters from the house. [...]

The neighbours said that this is not the first time rocks come crashing down the mountain, but the rocks have never been so big before.[...]

On March 7, 2004 at approximately 10:50 pm, we were heading East on Highway 16 just outside Edmonton between Stony Plain & Spruce Grove Alberta, Canada. In the Northeast sky at approximately 45 degrees we sighted a green fireball traveling south to north traveling downwards towards the earth. [...]

In the early morning hours of June 30,1908, a huge fireball streaked across the Siberian sky and crashed into the Earth.

“The sky split apart and a great fire appeared,” said one eyewitness in Vanavara, Russia. “It became so hot that one couldn’t stand it. There was a deafening explosion and my friend was blown over the ground across a distance of six metres. As the hot wind passed by, the ground and the huts trembled. Sod was shaken loose from our ceilings and glass was splintered out of the window frames.”

What was this cosmic visitor? For years, researchers have gone back to the site and tried to find out. Antonina Vasiliev, ten, walked with her father Nikolai and her brother, 100 kilometres through mosquito infested swamps and bogs to the site.

“I still remember,” she told the Belleville group of the Royal Astron omical Society at its March 5 meeting at Loyalist Pione er building.

Antonina showed slides her father and other scientists have taken investigating the phenomenon. Her father died in 2001 and she is dedicating her talks to his memory. Antonina currently works as a microbiologist at a Canadian organics company in Belleville.

The event in 1908 is called the Tunguska named after a river in Russia. The object left a trail of light 800 kilometres long and at first nobody knew what it was. Some thought it was an explosion of anti-matter. Others suggested a black hole. Some even claimed it to be the work of extra-terrestrials. But most scientists now agree it was a comet or an asteroid.

“It was the biggest event of its kind in recorded history,” Antonina said.

The power of the blast felled trees outward in a radial pattern of over 2,000 square kilometres, fires burned for weeks. The mass of the object has been estimated at about 100,000 tons and the force of the explosion at 40 megatons of TNT, 2,000 times the force of the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. By comparison, the explosive force of the Arizona asteroid that struck some 50,000 years ago, has been estimated at 3.5 megatons.

“Had such a cosmic body exploded over Europe instead of the desolate region of Siberia,&# 8221; notes Nikolai Vasiliev in a report, “the nu mber of human victims would have been 500,000 or more, not to mention the ensuing ecological catastrophe.”

Vasiliev stresses why continued investigations of the Tunguska event are important. “Because it will happen again, sometime.”

Antonina adds that with research they can make predictions and be ready. She urged members of the astronomical society to study the event themselves by researching old news reports around the world for any mention of unusual sky events or appearances during the five-day period before and after June 30, 1908. [...]

GARDEN GROVE, California – There is certainty in the thought that an asteroid or comet loitering in deep space has Earth’s name on it. While a civilization-snuffing impact is a low probability, it is not zero.

But there are other trouble-makers out there too. They are the smaller asteroids, and far more numerous. They too could mess up the day, but in a more localized way.

The technologies and techniques to defend Earth from such malicious cosmic interlopers were tackled at The Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids held here February 23-26, and sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). [...]

The discovery of a mysterious object in our solar system is the topic of a listen-and-log-on news briefing on Monday, March 15, at 1 p.m. EST.

Dr. Michael Brown, associate professor of planetary astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. will present his discovery of the most distant object ever detected orbiting the sun. He and colleagues made the discovery as part of a NASA-funded research project. [...]

Sutherland - Huge white domes make a jarring sight amid the landscape of South Africa's arid Karoo region.

Perched on a wind-swept hilltop, they house telescopes of different shapes and sizes that search the star-filled skies in this remote corner of the Earth for the secrets of the universe.

Those skies will soon be scanne d by a super scope that will probe far deeper into space than any of its neighbours - the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), which will be 12m in diameter.

"This is for deep space observation," said Hitesh Gajjar, an electrical engineer involved in the project, as he pointed with pride at SALT - a massive hexagon filled with 91 smaller mirrored hexagons, of which 18 are in place.

SALT will enable scientists to view stars and galaxies a billion times too faint to be visible to the naked eye. The official website says that is as about as faint as a candle's flame on the moon.

SALT wi ll also probe quasars, which resemble bright stars but are in fact black holes at the center of galaxies and which are some of the most distant objects in the universe.

The light reaching us now left them a long time ago and as a consequence we see them as they were billions of years ago when they were young.

"Very distant quasars give us information about earlier times in the history of the universe. One benefit is that this enables us to study the time evolution of the universe," said South African astronomer Chris Koen.

"We can also try to determine whether the same physical laws applied in the distant past because we see quasars as they were long ago," he said. [...]

Psychiatric admissions. Since the work of T. Dull and B. Dull in 1935, other studies have reinforced the suspicion that solar activity and the resultant geomagnetic activity are associated with human health problems. Here is the abstract of the latest study found:

"Numbers of first admissions per month for a single psychiatric unit, from 1977 to 1987, were examined for 1829 psychiatric inpatients to assess whether this measure was correlated with 10 parameters of geophysical activity. Four statistically significant values were 0.197 with level of solar radio flux at 2800 MHz in the corresponding month, -0.274 with sudden magnetic disturbances of the ionosphere, -0.216 with the index of geomagnetic activity, and -0.262 with the number of hours of positive ionization of the ionosphere in the corresponding month."

(Raps, Avi, et al; "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LXIX. Solar Activity and Admission of Psychiatric Inpatients," Perceptual and Motor Skills , 74:449, 1992.)

Comment . The above correlations are significant, but who knows how these parameters operate on the human body?

Cancer recurrence . Another possible health correlation was explored by H. Wendt in a paper presented at the 1992 European meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, in Munich. In this paper, Wendt claimed a correlation between the incidence of cancer recurrence and geomagnetic storm activity. Hopefully, further details will soon become available. (Anonymous; "SSE News Items," Journal of Scientific Exploration , 6:208, 1992.)

The two Mars Rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, working on opposite sides of the planet, have already achieved their shared goal: to find evidence of liquid water on the barren world. Although they didn't find actual glistening pools of Martian water, they did discover strong evidence that Mars was once a world drenched in water, with rivers and streams flowing into larger basins and perhaps even an ocean or two.

Important questions remain unanswered: Where did the water go? How long was it on the planet? And, because water is one of the key elements needed for life as we know it, was there -- is there -- life on that hunk of rock next door?

From the media standpoint -- and therefore that of most people -- the Viking Martian biological experiments were uncompromisingly negative. However, R. Lewis points out that this is simple not so.

The labelled-release experiments on both landers produced positive results every time a nutrient was added to fresh Martian soil. (The nutrient was tagged with carbon-14, and radioactive carbon dioxide always evolved, suggesting biological metabolism.) Further, the soil samples, when sterilized by heat, gave uniformly negative results.

On earth, such repeatable experiments would be considered strong evidence that life existed in the samples. The reason the Viking experiments were described as "negative&quo t; is that the other two life detection experiments produced negative or equivocal results. The gas chromatograph, for example, detected no organic molecules in the Martian soil; and it is difficult to conceive of life without organic molecules. At first, most scientists preferred to explain the ambiguous life-detection-experiment results in terms of strange extraterrestrial chemistry.

Nevertheless, strange extraterrestrial life would explain the data equally well. Everyone should be aware that the Viking biology team still considers life on Mars as a real possibility. (Lewis, Richard; "Yes. There Is Life on Mars," New Scientist , 80:106, 1978.)

SCIENTISTS have found a new world orbiting the solar system – more than 3 billion kilometres further away from the Sun than Pluto and 40 years away from Earth in a space shuttle.

It is provisionally known as Sedna, after the Inuit goddess of the sea.

The discovery of Sedna – 10 billion kilometres from Earth – is a testament to the new generation of high-powered telescopes.

Measurements suggest Sedna's diameter is almost 2000km – the biggest find in the solar system since Pluto was discovered 74 years ago. It is believed to be made of ice and rock, and is slightly smaller than Pluto.

The find will reignite the debate over what constitutes a planet. Some scientists claim even Pluto is too small to count as one. According to astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who discovered Sedna, there could be many other new worlds orbiting the Sun and waiting to be discovered.

"Sedna is very big, and much further out than previous discoveries," he said. "I'm pretty sure there are other large bodies up there too."

But physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, of Sydney's Macquarie University, said it was folly to describe Sedna as a planet. "It's fun, it's exciting, but let's keep it in proportion," Professor Davies said yesterday.

He said scientists had known for "a decade or so the solar system does not come to an abrupt halt" and there were a number of "planetessimals" or little planets, like Sedna. [...]

Our corner of the galaxy got a little stranger this week with the discovery of Sedna, the most distant object ever spotted in the solar system. Now astronomers are puzzling over how it got there.

The most intriguing idea is that there might be another world as big as Earth, a gravitational bully lurking in some unexplored corner of the solar system. [...]

"Perhaps there's more than one planet out there," Marsden said. "Who knows? But let's suppose it is something of an Earth mass, maybe even a few Earth masses. A close approach could throw this object [Sedna] from something more circular into something more eccentric." [...]

SAN DIEGO -- As far as flying space rocks go, it's as close an encounter as mankind has ever had.

A 100-foot diameter asteroid will pass within 26,500 miles of Earth on Thursday evening, the closest-ever brush on record by a space rock, NASA astronomers said.

The asteroid's close flyby, first spied late Monday, poses no risk, NASA astronomers stressed.

"It's a guaranteed miss," astronomer Paul Chodas, of the near-Earth object office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Wednesday.

The asteroid, 2004 FH, was expected to make its closest approach at 5:08 p.m. EST, streaking over the southern Atlantic Ocean. It should be visible through binoculars to stargazers across the so uthern hemisphere, as well as throughout Asia and Europe, said astronomer Steve Chesley, also of JPL.

Professional astronomers around the globe scrambled Wednesday to prepare for the flyby, which could provide an unprecedented chance to get a close look at the asteroid, he added. The asteroid will pass within the moon's orbit.

Similarly sized asteroids are believed to come as close to Earth on average once every two years, but have always escape d detection.

"The important thing is not that it's happening, but that we detected it," Chesley said.

Astronomers found the asteroid late Monday during a routine survey carried out with a pair of telescopes in New Mexico funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Follow-up observations on Tuesday allowed them to pinpoint its orbit.

"It immediately became clear it would pass very close by the Earth," Chesley said.

Astronomers have not ruled out that the asteroid and our planet could meet aga in sometime in the future. If the two were to collide, the asteroid likely would disintegrate in the atmosphere, Chesley said.

SpaceWeather.com made the following comments:

There's no danger of a collision, but it is close. For comparison, geosynchronous satellites orbit Earth at an altitude of 35,800 km, only six or sev en thousand km below the asteroid. 2004 FH's point of closest approach with the Earth will be over the South Atlantic Ocean.

A reader also sent the following today:

Saw a huge meteor burn up in the Savannah, GA skies last night. This thing was fully one quarter the size of a mid-heaven full moon and reminded me of the asteroid near collision in the documentary "Five Minutes to Impact".

A listing of Near Earth Objects that have already passed or will pass the BBM can be foundhere.

We find it difficult to believe NASA astronomers when they say that near earth meteorites such as 2004 FH fly by every two years, yet this is the first one that they have detected. It is likely that information is being withheld, but then again, this is nothing strange on the big blue marble. Just about everything of global significance is withheld from the masses.

A wave of massive explosions which erupted from the sun's surface was so powerful it came close to shutting down power grids and radio and mobile phone networks across the world.

The solar flare last November was more than twice as big as the previous recorded explosion - and so violent that satellite detectors were unable to record its true scale because they were bl inded by its radiation.

It generated a massive stream of electrically charged particles and gas which rocketed across space at two million miles per hour, with the ability to cause unprecedented disruption to radio transmissions and navigation systems on earth.

Until now the size of the flare and the seismic waves which followed it was unknown, but scientists have discovered it dwarfed the previous biggest flare in August 1989, which plunged six million people in Quebec into an electrical blackout.

A team of scientists at New Zealand's University of Otago have said that it almost wreaked unimaginable destruction.

Their calculations showed the flare's X-ray radiation striking the atmosphere was equivalent to that of 5,000 suns, although they said none of it reached the earth's surface.

The flare was not on a direct course and harmful radiation was absorbed by the magnetosphere, a protective layer around the earth.

The flare came during a spell of extraordinary solar activity, when the sun produced a series of vast explosions.

As gas from the core of the sun was heated to millions of degrees, radiation and billions of tonn es of charged particles were pumped into space.

An accompanying aurora was seen over the skies of southern England. At the time one scientist described the power of the flare as being greater than "every nuclear warhead being detonated at once".

19 March 2004 Astronomers can't yet make heads or tails out of all the crazy things they've seen in close-up pictures of comet Wild-2.

Its surface is littered with odd, well-like depressions, as well as hills, cliffs and active vents that belch gas into space. Some surface features are so large they take up half the size of the entire comet.

Comet's Features Look a Lot Like Some on Earth "Other than the Sun, this is the most active planetary surface in our solar system," said D onald Brownlee, principle investigator of the comet study. [...]

Scientists have claimed that the UK government is not serious in its study of potentially threatening rocks from space. They accuse government officials of not implementing necessary measures and instead using the subject as media opportunites.

Dr Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, accused ministers of being "all spin and no delivery". He specifically criticized the government of not implementing recommendations made by a task force in 2000, which was set up explicitly to assess the risk posed by Near Earth Objects (NEOs). [...]

Ambulances and RCMP cruisers were sent scrambling last night in search of a ball of fire that fell from the sky east of Winnipeg. "We were the first ones to see it, my partner and I," said Oakbank RCMP Const. Patrick Therrien. "We were coming out of the detachment area and we couldn't help but see it."

Therrien said he and his partner, Cpl. Mark Bingham, saw a turquoise object split into pieces and rocket toward Earth about 7:30 last night.

"It was kind of scar y, something that bright and that big coming down with a trail like that," Therrien said.

METEORITE OR SPACE JUNK?

They watched it for about 10 seconds.

"It was a brilliant colour, really beautiful."

Once they lost sight of the object behind some trees, Bingham said they called the Winnipeg airport to make sure they hadn't seen a plane crashing.

"Then we headed east to see if we could go find it," Bingham said .

Calls began pouring in to police from the southeastern part of the province. After 30 minutes without finding anything, the hunt was called off.

Both men said they think the object was a meteorite or space junk.

Researcher Chris Rutkowski said it was likely a bolide, a scientific term for fireball.

"Even though it looks like a plane on fire crashing behind the next hill, it's actually ... about 100 to 150 to 200 kilometres away."

ASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is parked by the shore of what used to be a salty martian sea, scientists say.

"We think Opportunit y is now parked on what was once the shoreline of a sal ty sea on Mars," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the science payload on Opportunity and its twin Mars exploration Rover, Spirit.

Scientists have long seen signs of liquid water on Mars, and the rovers' mission was to investigate areas believed to have been covered with water long ago. If there was water, theorists believe, there might have been life on the Red Planet, Earth's next-door neighbour.

This is the first time, though, that scientists have concrete evidence -- new data from the rovers' analysis of the Mars rocks themselves -- that water might have flowed on the martian surface.

"This dramatic confirmation of standing water in Mars' history builds on a progression of discoveries about that most Earthlike of alien planets," said Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science.

"This result gives us impetus to expand our ambitious program of exploring Mars to learn whether microbes have ever lived there and, ultimately, whether we can," Weiler said in a statement. [...]

Opportunity has been roving across the seemingly barren martian surface since January and is now working with rocks that were once covered with a rippling saltwater sea, the scientists said. [...]

MEDFORD — With conviction in his tone and a no-doubt-about-it confidence, George Filer is adamant about his beliefs.

"Take it to the bank," he says bluntly, "there is life on Mars."

A Medford resident, Filer is a retired U.S. Air For ce major who writes a weekly intelligence report on UFOs called "Filer’s Files." He has investigated UFO sightings for more than two decades.

"It started when I was in the Air Force when London control asked us to intercept a UFO," Filer said. "We had it on the radar, and they were also tracking a UFO over the center of England.

"We got it on radar … but when we got a couple miles out from it, this object launched into space. We were doing more than 400 miles an hour and it took off more than 100 times faster. Having seen this object, I was convinced there is something out there."

The conviction, Filer said, was reinforced when he saw another UFO rising from a lake near his home on Jackson Road in Medford.

"I have seen UFOs," Filer said without a hint of doubt or sarcasm.

"I saw one in Medford, and I have talked with dozens of people who have seen UFOs in Medford. I talked to a police officer who saw one over the Ford dealer (on Route 70)."

Filer said he has the opportunity to discuss UFOs with astronauts, cosmonauts and airline pilots.

"They have seen them, but won’t say it publi cly," Filer said. "To put it bluntly, our (military) air cruisers see them now, but they don’t talk about UFOs either. I’ve also had airline pilots contact me, but they are not supposed to tell the public they are seeing UFOs."

Filer believes stereotypes, quick dismissals and the refusal to "step out on a limb" are the reasons people don’t acknowledge UFO sightings.

"Most articles have an aren’t-you-crazy spin," he said. "I don’t care if you disagree, but don’t dismiss it. There is a large ridicule factor in regards to UFOs. I don’t know if you’ll report the story straight, but most of the time, there are remarks about people who see UFOs being flakes. [...]

Recently, Filer has taken up the task of studying published photos from Mars.

"We have been looking at the Rover film, and we encourage whoever reads this article to look at the film and concentrate on the rocks," Filer said.

"There are a million rocks, but the strange thing about the rocks is there’s a lot of writing on them and it looks like English.

"The logical thing is to th ink that Martians don’t write in English, but as we’re speaking, I’m looking at pictures from Mars and an X and a P that have been written on rocks.

"I believe what you see with your own eyes is more likely to be true, and I’m looking at it," Filer said.

REGINA - There were dozens of calls to police while people as far apart as Eastend, Saskatchewan and Steinbach, Manitoba saw a fireball streaking across the sky Sunday night.

The president of the Royal Astronomical Society in Saskatoon, Richard Huziak, said Monday morning that it was probably a meteor.

RCMP Corporal Brian Jones says about 24 people phoned in within 20 minutes of the event. The fireball was aslo seen in Davidson, Saskatchewan a nd all the way to Hecla Island, Manitoba. Huziak says that any sounds heard along with the p