Asteroid Day: A global day of awareness slated for June 30, 2015

[bananas]

Source: Astronomy Magazine

More than 100 leading scientists, astronauts and business leaders around the world have signed a declaration calling for the hundredfold increase in the detection and monitoring of asteroids.

Astrophysicist Brian May, founding member and lead guitarist of the rock band Queen, joined Lord Martin Rees, the UK Royal Astronomer, at the London Science Museum today to host a press conference to announce Asteroid Day, a global awareness campaign to educate the world about asteroids. The event was linked to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where Ryan Wyatt, director of the Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization, hosted astronauts Tom Jones, Ed Lu, and Apollo 9 Astronaut Rusty Schweickart. Bill Nye, the Science Guy and CEO of The Planetary Society, joined via video from New York.

A central focus of the event was the release of a 100x Declaration, calling for the hundredfold increase in the detection and monitoring of asteroids. Lord Rees read the declaration, which resolves to “solve humanity’s greatest challenges to safeguard our families and quality of life on Earth in the future."

The declaration calls for three key actions:

- Employ the available technology to detect and track near-Earth asteroids that threaten human populations

- A rapid hundredfold (100x) acceleration of the discovery and tracking of near-Earth objects

- Global adoption of Asteroid Day on June 30, 2015, to heighten awareness of the asteroid hazard and efforts to prevent future impacts.

The 100x Declaration was signed by more than 100 noted scientists, physicists, artists, and business leaders from 30 countries, including Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox, Anousheh Ansari, Kip Thorne, Stewart Brand, investors Shervin Pishevar and Steve Jurvetson, Alan Eustace and Peter Norvig of Google, Peter Gabriel, Jane Luu, Helen Sharman, Jill Tarter, and more than 38 astronauts and cosmonauts. For a full listing of signatories, visit: www.asteroidday.org/signatorieslist.

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Read more: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/12/asteroid-day-a-global-day-of-awareness-slated-for-june-30-2015

[bananas]

1. Asteroid strike warnings build towards campaigners' big day of rock

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/03/asteroid-strike-warning-campaigners-day-of-rock-awareness-day

Asteroid strike warnings build towards campaigners’ big day of rock

Ian Sample, science editor
Wednesday 3 December 2014 01.00 EST

Rock stars, astronauts and scientists from around the world have joined forces to combat the existential threat posed by an asteroid strike with plans for a live concert and an awareness day.

Preparations for Asteroid Awareness Day will be unveiled alongside a declaration signed by leading figures that calls on governments, private companies and philanthropists to back technologies that spot and track space rocks that might one day slam into Earth.

Signed by Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, Ed Lu, a former shuttle astronaut, and Brian May of rock group Queen, the declaration calls for a 100-fold speeding up of the search for dangerous asteroids and the adoption of Asteroid Awareness Day on 30 June 2015.

“We are in more danger than has been previously realised,” said May, “In fact it might be said that we are on borrowed time because out of the million or so estimated potential impacting asteroids of sufficient size to cause major destruction on Earth we are probably aware of only 10,000 - about 1 per cent.”

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[bananas]

2. Scientists call for killer asteroid hunt

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0925c1ac-7b0c-11e4-b630-00144feabdc0.html

Scientists call for killer asteroid hunt
Richard Waters in San Francisco
December 3, 2014 6:17 pm

An international group of astronauts, scientists and others have called for a rapid expansion of efforts to detect asteroids capable of causing widespread destruction on earth, warning that this is one of the biggest threats to humanity in the coming centuries.

Led by Lord Rees, Britain’s royal astronomer, and Brian May, a PhD in astrophysics as well as guitarist with the rock band Queen, the group said a hundredfold increase in the number of objects detected each year was necessary over the next decade.

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The more than 100 signatories have joined the call for governments and private bodies to accelerate asteroid tracking greatly, including 34 US and Russian astronauts, and scientists such as the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The call also has the support of technologists such as Google’s Alan Eustace, who in October made a record parachute jump from the edge of space, and Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technologist at Microsoft.

[bananas]

3. Brian May: act now to stop asteroids destroying humanity

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/03/brian-may-asteroid-day

Brian May: act now to stop asteroids destroying humanity
03 December 14 by James Temperton

Queen guitarist Brian May has warned that our obliteration is inevitable unless we take the threat of asteroid impacts seriously. May, who has PHD in astrophysics, called for a global effort to ensure a 100-fold increase in the detection and monitoring of asteroids.

His concerns have been echoed by royal astronomer Martin Rees and a group of more than 100 prominent physicists, artists and business leaders including Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox and Peter Gabriel.

The group have co-signed a declaration demanding increased use of technology to detect and track near-Earth asteroids and better discovery and tracking of new asteroid threats. An asteroid big enough to destroy an entire city is likely to hit Earth once every 100 years, it has been estimated.

Referencing the asteroid explosion in Tunguska, Russia in 1908, May said it would only take one big impact to wipe us all out: "We are currently aware of less than one percent of objects comparable to the one that impacted at Tunguska, and nobody knows when the next big one will hit."

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[byronius]

4. Tyson, I believe: "Asteroids are god's way of asking how that space program is going."

[SoapBox]

5. Bhaaa...science.

I can hardly wait for Sen. Inhofe's response.

[Alhena]

6. An obvious cover for an actual asteroid impact

[Blue_Tires]

7. I was hoping this was about a video game

good stuff regardless...

[hedgehog]

8. "Asteroid Day Sales!" "Asteroid Day Decorations!" "Annual War on Asteroid Day!"