Re: Planetary Protection Officer

----- Original Message -----
From: <laserlight@quixnet.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 8:34 AM
Subject: Re: Planetary Protection Officer

> From: Allan Goodall agoodall@att.net
> >I also saw, in the same programme, that there's a good chance of a
planet
> > killer striking the Earth in, I think it was, 2840. It was sometime
in
the
> > 2800s anyway. Not that any of _us_ will have to worry about it, but
that
> > seems awfully close by historically speaking.

> If in 600 years we haven't made sufficient progress to cope with that,
I'd
> say we deserve to get hit.

Well, according to the NASA article Indy posted the link to in his
earlier
email, the solution to having it hit us could be as simple as painting
one
side of it so that it reflects the sun's light differently or collapsing
a
reflective solar sail over it.	Over the course of hundreds of years,
simple
things like how and object will reflect the sun's light and eject heat
based
on it (reflecting heat in one direction acts like a very small rocket in
the
other) can have a large impact on where it will go over that time. 
However,
we've got about 15 near passes by the Earth which have no chance of
impact
before it's expected to _possibly_ hit (current estimate of odds is 1 in
300
at best) in 2880.

E