http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/space/1602828
Asteroids regularly explode over Earth with the intensity of a nuclear bomb and there is a chance the explosions could be mistaken for a nuclear attack, possibly triggering an atomic war, an Air Force general said Thursday. At least 30 times a year, a space rock measuring a few yards across slashes into the atmosphere and explodes, releasing energy equal to that of an atomic bomb, Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden told members of a House science subcommittee. Worden, deputy director for operations of the U.S. Strategic Command, said the United States has satellite instruments that determine within a minute if the explosion is a nuclear weapon or a natural explosion from an asteroid. But no one else has such technology, he said, and without it, some countries could infer the explosions came from a nuclear bomb and could launch an atomic attack against an enemy. For instance, Worden said, Pakistan and India, both of which have the atomic bomb, were at full alert in August, poised for war. Not far away, a few weeks before, Worden said, U.S. satellites detected over the Mediterranean an atmospheric flash that indicated "an energy release comparable to the Hiroshima burst." Air Force instruments quickly determined it was caused by an asteroid 15 feet to 30 feet wide. "Had you been situated on a vessel directly underneath, the intensely bright flash would have been followed by a shock wave that would have rattled the entire ship, and possibly caused minor damage," Worden told the panel. The explosion received little or no notice, the general said, but it possibly could have caused a major human conflict had it occurred over India or Pakistan while those countries were on high alert. "The resulting panic in the nuclear-armed and hair-triggered opposing forces could have been the spark that ignited a nuclear horror we have avoided for over a half-century," he said. Worden said the Air Force's early warning satellites in 1996 detected an asteroid burst over Greenland that released energy equal to about 100,000 tons of explosives. He said similar events are thought to have occurred in 1908 over Siberia, in the 1940s over Central Asia and over the Amazon basin in the 1930s. Worden said the current generation of early warning satellites do a good job of detecting asteroid bursts in the atmosphere and that new equipment will be even better. He said the Air Force is working on an asteroid alert program that would quickly send information from the satellites to interested nations. He said the Air Force is studying the establishment of what he called a Natural Impact Warning Clearinghouse that would be part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command communications center in Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colo. NASA is in the midst of a 10-year program to find and assess every asteroid of 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) or more in size that could pass close to Earth and might pose a danger to the planet. If an asteroid 1 kilometer in size struck the planet it could wipe out whole countries. An asteroid 1 mile across could snuff out civilizations, while one that is 3 miles across could cause human extinction, experts say. xponent Little Boom Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
