Asteroids are sexy again.

Sure, in 1998 we had two blockbuster movies ("Armageddon", which sucked, and "Deep Impact" which was excellent) showing us that asteroid and comet impacts could generate giant tsunamis, wipe out all life, cause lots of quick-cut camera shots, make Ben Affleck cry, and so on, but in the intervening years they haven’t gotten as much attention. There have been documentaries on TV and some coverage in the dead tree media, but that’s about it.

But in the past couple of weeks there’s been a resurgence of interest. Of course, having three big, bright fireballs lighting up the skies recently didn’t hurt: the one in Darfur months ago, or the one in Canada weeks ago, or the one in Colorado the other night (which I missed, dagnappit!). Maybe it was the publishing of a brilliant book with a whole chapter dealing with asteroid impacts. Hard to say.

But most likely it was the reporting on findings from panels of top-level scientists on the topic that’s caused a mini-flurry of stories. The BBC news had a story on it just the other day. They interviewed Professor Richard Crowther, chair of the UN Working Group on Near Earth Objects (NEOs); and as you might expect, his conclusion was that we need to get off our asteroids and do something:

The document says most asteroids entering the Earth’s atmosphere are small and burn up before reaching the surface. But it is the larger ones – perhaps 200m or more across – that would need to be deflected away from a collision course with the Earth.

Even a rock 50 meters across could take out a city, exploding high in the atmosphere and generating a devastating shock wave and fireball. But it’s literally impossible to find asteroids that small very long before impact. 150 meters or so is a reasonable size to find, and that’s also about the size where they start doing damage on a large scale.

The UK newspaper The Guardian also picked up on this story, talking about (what I think is) a different group called the International Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation:

The international community must begin work now on forging three impact prevention elements – warning, deflection technology and a decision-making process – into an effective defence against a future collision,’ said the International Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, which is chaired by former American astronaut Russell Schweickart. The panel made its presentation at the UN’s building in Vienna.

This is an important point, We need to find these suckers, we need to understand what to do, and we need to understand how to do it. Think of it this way: we find an asteroid 300 meters across, and calculate it will hit in Germany. Uh oh! So we launch a rocket, use our tech, and push it out of the way… kinda. Something goes wrong, and it only gets nudged. We recalculate the path… and find out it will now hit Pakistan. Oops! Their government might be a little ticked over such a thing, so we need to have some sort of process in place to deal with these (fairly realistic) issues.

I’m glad that scientists are able to get their reports out to the public, and I certainly hope the UN takes the threat seriously — they will meet in February to discuss the issue. This is a global problem, and needs to be dealt with on an international scale.

From February 19 – 22, 2009, I’ll be in San Diego attending Spacefest, a fantastic conference featuring scientists, astronauts, artists, and space afficiandos. I’ve written about it before, so you can get the details there.

Kim Poor, the organizer, just informed me that he has updated his guest list: it now includes Apollo 12 astronaut Dick Gordon, as well as Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood — the stars of the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey"! That’s very cool. Moreover, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart will give a talk about how to prevent asteroid impacts, a topic he is an expert in (as people who have read my book already know).

I had a fantastic time at the last Spacefest (check out my photos on Flickr!), and I’m really looking forward to this one. Plus, San Diego is a happening town, and I always enjoy visiting. I hope to see plenty of BABloggees there!

To everyone in the Denver area: my talk scheduled for Thursday night December 11th at the Denver Museum of Science & Nature has been canceled. Looks like there weren’t enough pre-registrations (too close to the holiday season maybe?), and so they decided to postpone the talk until next year. I apologize to anyone who was planning on attending. I’m always hoping to do more events in the local Denver metro area (including Boulder of course), so I’m sure other things will turn up. Sorry about this.

… in this case, death from it. Carolyn Collins Petersen is the aforementioned Space Writer, BABlog commenter, planetarium show creator, and also a friend. I’m sure that last bit in no way influenced her review of my book, which is stunningly accurate in its portrayal of my book being really good.

C²P, your check is in the mail.

Also, there is a review on The Melbury Gentlemen’s Club site. It’s a polite review, fitting for "a blog of manners". The previous post is a guide to cigars, which personally interests me as well. Hey, if the world’s gonna end, then a nice cigar is probably your best bet.

The California Literary Review asked me to answer some questions pertaining to Chapter 1 of my book, Death from the Skies!, where I talk about asteroid impacts. They’ve posted my replies on their site.

This is such a broad and interesting topic, and it’s really hard to boil down the important stuff to just a few dozen words. I tend to be a bit, um, wordy, so sometimes I have a hard time saying my name in a few dozen words, but I hope that the Q&A gives you a sense of what’s going on.

The wonderful ladies at Skepchick have posted their holiday gift-giving guide. It’s a podcast, and has lots of good suggestions for you. Of course, books make fine gifts as well.

For the past few months I’ve been doing a series of short astronomy videos with producer/director Tom Lucas. Unlike my own videos I do in my house, these are professionally made, and I’ve been very happy with the past few.

Yesterday the sixth episode was posted, called "Hubble’s Hotties". It’s a Top Ten List of Hubble images, except it’s only really the Top Six. Sorry, but there’s only so much you can squeeze into five minutes!

It’s also available in high-res (click the link under the video on the YouTube page).

We filmed this at the Denver Museum of Science & Nature, and I’m grateful for the use of their facility. And I’ll be back there on the 11th of December to give a talk about asteroid impacts and my book, Death from the Skies! It’s a great place, and I hope some of you can join me there.