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Hey, Steven Spielberg, Why Not Put Some Of Your Big Bucks Where Your Blockbuster Is This Summer?
By Dan Huff
ROUGHLY 65 MILLION years ago, a fairly large comet or asteroid
slammed into the earth near what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Judging by the geological evidence scientists have unearthed
all over the world, the horrendous impact triggered a massive
die-off of plant and animal life. Some theorize this event may
have hurried the dinosaurs to extinction, thus allowing some otherwise
unremarkable, possibly rat-sized mammal to flourish on the evolutionary
plains of time, eventually giving rise to...well, us.
As a species, we've only very recently become aware of the distinct
possibility that our pre-history may have been hammered into place
by this incomprehensibly violent planetary disaster.
And now that we know, what do we--the supposedly sentient apex
of 65 million years of terrestrial evolution--do?
We make movies about it and scare ourselves silly.
Armageddon, staring Bruce Willis, is due out July 1, while
executive producer Steven Spielberg's Deep Impact will
be released tomorrow, May 8. Both will undoubtedly pull in hundreds
of millions of dollars from popcorn-munching audiences worldwide.
Yes, life is good, and the movies are better than ever.
MEANWHILE, NOT FAR from Tucson, on an asteroid-sized mountain
known as Kitt Peak, Tom Gehrels, a lanky, blond University of
Arizona astronomer, pursues his lonely professional passion, which
involves scanning the night skies with a 77-year-old telescope
jerryrigged to assorted computer gear, searching for potential
killer comets and asteroids.
The Spacewatch program, which the erudite Gehrels began in 1980,
is one of only two early-warning programs operating full-time.
The other is conducted in Hawaii. A third, part-time operation
is active occasionally in New Mexico, and there are an unknown
number of amateur astronomers scanning the heavens on any given
night. All of the professional astronomers and serious amateurs
report their discoveries to the Astronomical Union's Central Bureau
for Astronomical Telegrams operated by Brian Marsden, of the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So far, Gehrels and his colleagues have calculated there are
about 1,700 potentially threatening objects--asteroids and comets
one kilometer or larger in diameter--orbiting the sun. These are
objects that could, in the event of an impact with earth, wipe
out human civilization. The really scary thing, however, is that
so far the astronomers have managed to spot only about 300 of
them.
Although a catastrophic collision is unlikely in our lifetime--they
happen every 330,000 years or so, according to Gehrels--nevertheless,
any Homo Sapiens with an adequately evolved brain can't help but
draw a slightly uneasy breath or two when contemplating the obstacles
facing this intensely dedicated astronomer:
- Here's a man who's engaged in a constant struggle for
funding. "At one point," Gehrels says, "I asked
my wife and children if we could sell our home, because I thought
I had ruined a $90,000 CCD chip and I needed another one to continue
my work."
As it turns out, the chip, which translates extremely faint starlight
into electronic signals for viewing on a computer monitor, wasn't
ruined, and Gehrels didn't have to sell his home--although he
says his wife and children readily agreed to the idea.
- And even at $90,000, the chip Gehrels uses is not the
best the world which he is working so hard to protect can produce.
The best costs $130,000, and Gehrels has been unable to find a
donor willing to foot the bill.
- Here's an astronomer who laments that most other astronomers
aren't terribly interested in doing the mundane work of cataloging
the celestial threats to their home planet. It's difficult, he
says, to keep good help.
- Here's a man who says that for a mere $730,000 or so,
we could improve humanity's ability to detect potentially deadly
space objects by as much as eight times. With that amount of cash,
we could quickly begin conducting a thorough and systematic scan
of the heavens on a monthly basis, leaving Gehrels' current telescope
free to keep tabs on just the potentially deadly objects he and
his colleagues have already spotted.
Unfortunately, Gehrels and his colleagues have been unable to
find a government agency--or, more likely, a wealthy donor--willing
to pop for that $730,000 in hardware that one day may help save
the planet from a real cosmic Armageddon. Which, of course, raises
the age-old question:
Is there intelligent life on earth?
IN DEEP IMPACT, actor Robert Duvall plays an astronaut
sent out to rendezvous with a threatening comet and detonate a
nuclear charge designed to nudge it into a harmless orbit. In
Armageddon, Willis' character tries the same thing with
an asteroid. It's a possibility that some real-life rocket jockeys,
nuke experts and even a few astronomers agree might one day offer
our only hope of survival.
But with humanity's hit-or-miss reliance on amateur astronomy,
and only two full-time, professionally-staffed programs scanning
the skies, the likelihood that we'll spot the fat lady before
she sits on our snoozing chihuahua is, at best, remote.
Which is doubly sad, really. Because, in one decisive moment,
we could somewhat justify our ruinous presence in ever-increasing
numbers on this beleaguered orb. In one grand, flashing moment,
Hiroshima, the hideously wasteful Cold War arms race, nuclear
proliferation and pollution, as well as mankind's violent and
contentious nature, would all make spectacular historical and
moral sense:
We evolved and suffered as individuals and as a species to save
this planet.
In this view, our edgy brains and dangerous weapons are mother
earth's way of preventing another disastrous wipeout of the web
of life. We're planet earth's killer-T cells, man-sized macrophages
who scour near-space for the solar system's disease-causing agents.
Of course, that rather novel theory of history would put Gehrels
and his asteroid-hunting colleagues, as well as the scientists
who developed atomic weapons, at the very top of the evolutionary
scale.
Gehrels, intent on his incoming computer images as he sat atop
Kitt Peak one clear night last week, merely laughed at the suggestion.
Later, however, outside in the darkness under a vast sea of stars,
the idea didn't seem all that implausible to the visitors who
were privileged to watch Gehrel's work that night.
MICHAEL TOLKIN, ONE of two main scriptwriters for Spielberg's
film, spent several nights observing the work on Kitt Peak. Then
Tolkin locked himself in a suite at the Arizona Inn for about
six days and produced a rough draft of what eventually became
Deep Impact. Gehrels, who has devoted his life to the precise
requirements of science, doesn't really approve of the finished
product, although he says Tolkin is an "excellent writer."
The astronomer doesn't seem to understand Hollywood types in
general--"Those people seem to hug and kiss each other a
lot," he observes in mildly envious tones. And probably because
of his cranky, outspoken insistence on scientific accuracy, he
wasn't invited to any of the premier parties Spielberg's organization
has thrown to promote the new flick.
It's too bad that Gehrels, who thinks in terms of millions of
miles and thousands of lightyears, doesn't apply the same grasp
of large numbers to Hollywood's money-making potential. It has
apparently never occurred to him to hitch Spacewatch's chronic
funding requirements to this summer's rising box-office stars.
So allow us to do it for him. We haven't asked Gehrels' permission--he'd
probably try to stop us--but here goes:
Hey, Spielberg, ya wanna save the planet? For real? Then fork
over $730,000 to the UA's Spacewatch program. One small chunk
of change for a Hollywood mega mogul, one giant insurance policy
for mankind.
Hello? Anybody out there?
Uh, how 'bout you, Bruce?
Save your popcorn money--and the planet. Send a donation to Spacewatch,
Lunar and Planetary Lab, University of Arizona, 85721.
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