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Protecting the Planet: SPACE.com Q&A with Asteroid Hunter David Morrison
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
02 July 2002
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David Morrison figures his decade of efforts to keep the world safe from asteroids has been very successfu
David Morrison figures his long effort to keep the world safe from asteroids has been very successful. "In 11 years of protecting the planet, not a single human has been killed," he pointed out to me recently. | | | | THE ODDS | | Odds are you'll die somehow. For U.S. residents, here are some ways, and some odds the experts have applied to them: Car Crash: 1-in-100 Electrocution: 1-in-5,000 Asteroid Impact: 1-in-20,000 Plane Crash: 1-in-20,000 Tornado: 1-in-60,000 Bite or Sting: 1-in-100,000 SOURCE: Chapman & Morrison, Nature, 1994 | | INSIDE | | "A large impact is not something we expect to happen in our lifetime, in our childrens' lifetime, or even our grandchildrens' lifetime. It would be very bad luck if it did happen. But it could happen at any time." -- David Morrison
Read the interview >>> | | SCIENCE TUESDAY | | Visit SPACE.com to explore a new science feature each Tuesday. >>Go to Science Tuesday Archive | | Morrison is of course not the only person working to save Earth from potentially deadly space rocks. But the sometimes outspoken, always affable space scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center was one of the first people involved. In the early 1990s, he chaired a committee that generated the Spaceguard Survey Report, which advised NASA and Congress to search for and determine the paths of all Near Earth Objects (NEOs), asteroids and comets larger than 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) that roam the region of space also occupied by Earth. Morrison is a moderating voice in a field whose most vocal members are sometimes accused of attempting to frighten the public. That doesn't mean he thinks we're entirely safe. "The impact hazard is real, and it is of a magnitude at least as great as many other natural hazards," Morrison testified before Congress in 1993. "Over long time spans, impact catastrophes are inevitable. What happened to the dinosaurs can happen to us." What happened to the dinosaurs, and many other species of their time, was that they were annihilated by the global effects of an impact by an asteroid the size of a city. Sixty-five million years later, the Spaceguard recommendations were adopted, and today a worldwide effort funded partly by NASA and involving several institutions has found about half of the roughly 1,000 large NEOs thought to exist. Today, Morrison chairs the working group on NEOs in the International Astronomical Union, a volunteer position. He also maintains a comprehensive Web page on the subject. He typifies the pieced-together nature of the overall effort to guard the planet, one dominated by part-time contributors, arguably underfunded programs and a league of amateurs who do much of the grunt work -- follow-up observations that help determine if a recently discovered NEO is on course to one day hit Earth. At a recent gathering of astrobiologists, where Morrison wore the hat he gets paid for as Senior Scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, he told me he views his asteroid watch as a hobby. I sat down with the Harvard Ph.D. to discuss the often controversial state of his part-time industry, the search for NEOs and the question of what to do if we find one with our name on it. Read the interview >>>
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