{"id":6254,"date":"2014-12-28T14:11:48","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T21:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6254"},"modified":"2014-12-28T14:11:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-28T21:11:48","slug":"the-human-race-has-been-living-on-borrowed-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/28\/the-human-race-has-been-living-on-borrowed-time\/","title":{"rendered":"“[T]he human race has been living on borrowed time.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Age of Asteroids<\/h1>\n

BY\u00a0JONATHAN BLITZER<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>A view of the asteroid Lutetia from the European Space Agency\u2019s Rosetta spacecraft.<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>CREDIT<\/span>IMAGE FROM THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian May, the longtime guitarist of the rock band Queen, is also an astrophysicist. He started his career, in 1970, as a Ph.D. student at Imperial College, London, but four years later, after Queen released its second album, he put his studies on hold. In 2008, he finally finished his doctorate, with a thesis on zodiacal light, the faint patch of interstellar radiance that\u2019s sometimes visible on the horizon at night. Last Wednesday, May joined Lord Martin Rees, the U.K.\u2019s Astronomer Royal, at London\u2019s Science Museum to discuss asteroids and the threats they pose to life on Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it becomes that the human race has been living on borrowed time,\u201d May said. About a million near-Earth asteroids are thought to be on a possible collision course with our planet, but only ten thousand or so have actually been charted. May and Rees were among a hundred scientists, astronauts, artists, and technologists calling for a worldwide campaign to identify, and eventually deflect, these asteroids. \u201cIn astronomical terms, this is very down home, very much on our back doorstep,\u201d Rees said. The advocacy campaign is united around what is known as the 100x Declaration, which aims to persuade governments and the private sector to discover and track a hundred thousand asteroids each year over the next decade. The declaration calls for the adoption of a global Asteroid Day on June 30, 2015, the hundred and seventh anniversary of the Tunguska event, in which a small asteroid exploded over Siberia, destroying eight hundred square miles of remote forest and releasing a hundred and eighty-five times as much energy as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at The New Yorker<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New Yorker The Age of Asteroids BY\u00a0JONATHAN BLITZER A view of the asteroid Lutetia from the European Space Agency\u2019s Rosetta spacecraft.\u00a0CREDITIMAGE FROM THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY Brian May, the longtime guitarist of the rock band Queen, is also an astrophysicist. He started his career, in 1970, as a Ph.D. student at Imperial College, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}