© ESA
A new international group meets for the first time in February to coordinate efforts to predict and prevent major asteroid impacts.
A new international group meets for the first time in February to coordinate efforts to predict and prevent major asteroid impacts.
We've all watched those scenes in science fiction movies where the leaders of the planet (or planets) all sit around a large table and come to a consensus about the best way to confront the latest existential threat. I'm always left wondering where the heck they get such a huge table, and how they managed to come up with a unanimous plan of action in less than 5 minutes. It's a little different from the endless gabfest of political posturing translating to minimal real-world action that is a meeting of today's United Nations.
Or is it? The first ever meeting of the Space Mission Planning and Advisory Group (SMPAG, pronounced "same page" -- see what they did there?) set to be hosted by the European Space Agency on February 6 and 7 sounds a little more like the Hollywood version of consensus-making, just with less melodrama and fewer ridiculously beautiful people everywhere.
Comment: All the 'booms' cannot be attributed to exploding tannerite because they don't fit the description of loud booms that "shake houses" and are heard "around the county and beyond". Here are two videos of 20 pounds of tannerite exploding:
It's quite loud, and indeed it could shake a nearby house, but it's not going to be heard for miles around and it's not going to startle people if they're used to tannerite going off.