The Island of Doubt

The juxtaposition in recent news lineups of the debate over the definition of a planet and the depressing debacle in Lebanon puts the lie to the idea we live in a global village. While some of us are lucky enough to be paid to argue over whether "hydrostatic equilibrium" is enough to warrant planethood, others are trying to figure out whether it's worth rebuilding their family homestead, which has just been bombed into rubble. Again. Given this particular historical context, it only seems to fair to check on what astronomy is really good for -- other than giving us something more valuable to do with the planets than casting horoscopes, that is. I am happy to report that it's not entirely an abstract indulgence of the developed world.

The folks who organized the International Astronomical Union's XXVIth General Assembly now underway in Prague managed to come up with two week's worth of material, so they must be doing more than debating the finer points of orbital mechanics. Indeed, the schedule includes lot of neato stuff, from the usual suspects of the evolution of life, pulars, neutron stars, black holes and supernovae to more down-to-earth matters, such as observatory facilities and "Innovations in Teaching."

The most useful topic, though, must be "Near Earth Objects, our Celestial Neighbors: Opportunity and Risk." From the session's website comes this gem of euphemistry:

NEOs are important because they can strongly interact with the terrestrial planets, thus they are the physical cause of major evolutionary processes on the planetary surfaces and in the atmospheres. This includes cratering, formation/removal of atmospheres and perturbations to the biosphere.

You have to love phrases like "strongly interact with the the terrestrial planets" and "perturbations to the biosphere." What they really mean is NEOs are important because they occasionally wipe out 90 per cent of all species on a planet.

Now, some may believe that the millions of dollars that astronomers say are needed to anticipate the trajectories of wayward asteroids could be better spent on research to cure malaria or one of Bill Gates' or Bjorn Lomborg's other pet priorities. But it's hard to argue that anything poses quite the same risk as a one of the "extinction-level events" that obsessed Hollywood back in the pre-9/11 era. (Well, OK, there is climate change, but we're talking apples and oranges, probability-wise.)

I'm all for committing the relatively modest sums required for setting up a proper NEO tracking network. There seems to be a fair bit of optimism in the ranks of the IAU on that particular subject. Whoever wrote the description of the five-day NEO session, which wraps up Friday, noted that ".. this is being successfully taken care of by astronomical observations, dynamical computations and development of deflection technology."

I wasn't aware that we were anywhere near coming up with anything that stood a chance of deflecting even a modestly sized asteroid on a collision course with us. But I look forward to reading a summary of the discussion, one that can validate the organizer's belief that:

...the educational value and public outreach potential of NEO related issues are outstanding. The IAU has had in recent years an important role in putting the impact phenomena in the proper context, helping in correcting the public perception and showing that astronomy does something which is, at least potentially, important for the society at large.

Rock on, astronomers.