New Scientist's Downplaying of the Asteroid Danger

[kalibex]

Backers of Asteroid Day – including Chris Hadfield, Brian Cox and Richard Dawkins – call for a 100-fold acceleration of efforts to detect near-Earth asteroids in the next decade and increased funding to achieve this goal.

But asteroid-trackers say existing sky surveys already keep us safe, and events like Asteroid Day risk scaring people unnecessarily.

"The asteroid impact threat is very easy to overstate and misunderstand," says Eric Christensen of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "The popular conception of asteroids is that they are menacing and going to kill us all, and it's just not true."

They of course focus on identifying the big ones - not the smaller ones. But, as Asteroid Day supporters point out,

"We're talking about things that might 'only' set the world economy back by a thousand years, or might 'only' kill 100 million people, those are the kinds of things we haven't yet found," says Ed Lu, chairman of the B612 Foundation based in Mill Valley, California. B612 – named after the asteroid in The Little Prince - is a non-profit organisation aiming to build a private asteroid-hunting space telescope.

_http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27764-dont-fear-apocalyptic-asteroids-youre-safer-than-you-think.html#.VYnuRxxqKOI_

 

[Archaea]

I recently started reading new scientist again. I read it from cover to cover and I'd say it's probably about 50% propaganda, so I'm not surprised by this at all. I think it really is a PTB publication.