Peter Sinclair: Waiting for the rocks and roll

By PETER SINCLAIR

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but the end is nigh. Did I hear someone murmur, "What, again?"

Yes. Don't settle down just yet, it's time to be up and panicking. After the disappointments of Y2K - no Armageddon, no collapse of human civilisation, nothing - last-ditch millennialists have had to cast round for a brand new dread. They have come up with a winner.

Sexier than global warming, more thrilling than nuclear war, it's ... meteor-strike. And it could happen at any moment - give or take a million years - when something decides to fall on us out of the great rock-pile in the sky.

The consternation industry is revving up again. The BBC reports that "an expert taskforce to assess the threat of an asteroid strike on Earth has been appointed by the UK Government".

Chairman Harry Atkinson, formerly of the European Space Agency, says it is a question of when, not if. He estimates your chances of being struck dead by an asteroid are 750 times greater than your prospects of winning Lotto.

The sky, he points out, is alive with more than 700 NEO's (near-Earth objects) being tracked by surface-based telescopes.

None presents any foreseeable risk, true - but what about the ones we haven't spotted, he asks, claiming with gloomy satisfaction that most destructive incoming meteorites are too small to be picked up by telescopes until moments before they hit.

It's believed that only 800 years ago one of them rearranged Otago in an explosion on a par with the Tunguska event of 1908. Maori remember it in the place-names Waipahi ("exploding fire") and Tapanui ("big bang"), both of which are peppered with glassy tektites (http://webplaza.pt.lu)

Tunguska itself, a remote and largely uninhabited corner of Siberia, was flattened by a 700m-wide asteroid that exploded 6km overhead, knocking people senseless more than 80 km from the scene (www.psi.edu).

Said locals present at the time: "The ground heaved and an incredibly prolonged roaring was heard ... Eventually the noise died away and the wind dropped, but the forest went on burning. Many reindeer were lost ..." One elderly herdsman found himself with a broken leg about 12m foot up a fir tree.

Rome's Spaceguard Foundation has sent a team there from the University of Bologna to poke miserably about for clues, bitten by horse-flies and pestered by bears.

So what will happen when one of Dr Atkinson's asteroids the size of, say, Smith & Caughey's store, suddenly heads our way? Alarm yourself at Meteors, Meteorites and Impacts or StarLab, where you can stage your own Java-powered meteor-strike, varying the distance, speed and angle of descent of your flying department-store to see what happens. Splat, basically.

Apprehensive readers wishing to take evasive action may need a copy of Norbert Haley's locally-produced Astronomical Pocket Diary for advance warning of all this assorted space junk - heaven is an untidy place.

Of course, if you can't beat them, you can always wear them. You could buy a gold and platinum pendant from Metalsmiths, or a pallasite brooch from the Meteor Market, might lend you a certain Neolithic chic.

I refuse to worry. I was always brought up to believe that the moon and other celestial bits and pieces are made of green cheese.

* Comments: petersinclair@email.com