|
|
|
|
Asteroid Weather
Thu May 26, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Many scientists think a colossal asteroid smashed into the Earth around 65-million years ago, drastically changing the climate and killing the plant life that dinosaurs depended on. Today, astronomers are on the lookout for another such weather-altering event. Correspondent Curt Nickisch has the story.
Ron Dyvig, an amateur astronomer for almost fifty years, recently built this observatory in the remote South Dakota Badlands.
RD: You want to close that door behind you, that would be good to help keep the observatory cool.
Dyvig's personal mission is to find huge chunks of space rock careening through the solar system that may be on a collision course with Earth. He's afraid the impact from an especially large asteroid could scatter so much debris into the atmosphere it would block the sunlight, distorting weather patterns for years.
RD: Alls you have to do is look at the moon and you see avid evidence, at least in the ancient past, of many, many collisions having taken place. And of course the Earth was bombarded the same way, but because of our tectonic plate movements along with our weathering system, most of the craters have been totally camouflaged and obliterated.
The Badlands Observatory is just one of hundreds around the globe that participate in a NASA-sponsored effort to discover potentially dangerous asteroids and map their orbits.
RD: The probability is very low that there is an object, within our lifetimes even, that is going to impact us with global effects. However, statistics being the way they are, one could be on track next week, next month or next year.
Dyvig has discovered more than two dozen asteroids and helped track hundreds of others. So far every one will pass Earth at a safe distance.
At the Badlands Observatory in western South Dakota, I'm Curt Nickisch.
We are funded generously by Subaru of America and The National Science Foundation.
|
|
