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CCNet 97/2002 - 20 August 2002
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"When the close Earth approach of a large NEA rises above the background level (the Palermo Scale value is then greater than zero) we know this event is out of the ordinary and hence of some concern."
-- NASA/JPL, Impact Risk website

"What do asteroid impacts have to do with the Gaia hypothesis? Perhaps Gaia has gotten tired of being whacked by asteroids and having to restart biological evolution over and over again. Perhaps she evolved technologically sophisticated, big-brained mammals who can travel in space as a way of protecting herself from asteroids. Like antibodies that protect the body from invading disease organisms, humans can defend our Earth Mother against extraterrestrial intruders. Just a thought."
-- Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, 31 July 2002

"Space Rock just misses" - or so said the headline on the article in Saturday's Herald Sun on the recent passing by of asteroid 2002NY40. A few days earlier, ABC Western Plains, the voice of Australia in rural NSW, advised "Don't panic . . . yet" as they, too, discussed our looming encounter with said space rock. Don't panic indeed. This near miss, the latest in a long line of asteroid scares, may well have been a close thing in astronomical terms, but to us on the ground, the fact that it missed Earth by well over half-a-million kilometres hardly seems to justify the use of the words "just misses" let alone the wastage of the necessary column inches to do so. Asteroid near-misses are this year's Y2K drama - promoted, hyped and blown out of all proportion by bespectacled gents in white laboratory coats doing all they can to boost their funding applications."
-- John Weldon, The Age (Australia), 20 August 2002

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1. ASTEROID FLYBY SEEN WORLDWIDE . . .
Sky & Telescope, 19 August 2002

• IMPROVED MODELLING OF ASTEROID TSUNAMI . . .
Michael Paine

**MORE COMMENTS ON 2002 NT7**

• DEFENDERS OF EARTH: ARE HUMANS GAIA'S IMMUNE SYSTEM . . . ?
Reason Online, 31 July 2002

• ARMAGEDDON: COULD IT BE CLOSER THAN WE THINK . . . ?
The Express, 2 August 2002

• ASTERODDS PLAYING UP . . . ?
The Mirror, 2 August 2002

• BEWARE OF BUSES FROM DEEP SPACE . . .
Space Daily, 31 July 2002

• WHAT THE NT7 AFFAIR IS TELLING ME . . .
Daniel Fischer

• 2002 NT7 IN SOUTH AFRICAN MEDIA . . .
Jon Richfield

• A BIT OF NEO HISTORY: REVERSED ROLES AS BBC CRITCISE NASA OVER ASTEROID SCARE . . .
BBC News Online, 4 November 2000

...And, Finally:

• WHY SMART PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS TOO . . .
Scientific American, September 2002

All currently available at CCNet.

*** PLEASE NOTE ***

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Dan

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