Thursday 24 February 2011

Saving Wildlife - NASA Worried of a Big Asteroid Hit - We Should Worry About Small Ones Too


NASA is working on a program which can be described at a Planetary Defense System in case a giant asteroid is headed directly for Earth, we'd be able to save ourselves. How so you ask? Well, by deflecting, diverting, or destroying it, that's how. Do we have the technology? Yes, but we don't have the system in place yet, and we need to learn a whole lot more about asteroids before we build it.
Still, our Think Tank has reasoned that we don't just have to worry about the big ones, as we also need to be worried about the smaller ones too, let's say anything bigger than 100 meters across. Why? Well, we don't have to worry about a 100m asteroid from causing humans to go extinct, but depending on where it lands it could cause an endangered species to go extinct, and thus, maybe we should be concerned about that as well - see that point?
An interesting article in Futurist Magazine's "World Trends and Forecasts" published in the March-April issue on page 6, which explained that "Many of today's protected species could die out from a sudden catastrophic event," and historically cataclysmic evolution has played a role in causing extinction. The article suggests that any species with 5,000 or fewer members is at severe risk from such an event, whereas, species with greater numbers will have enough survive to rebound.
Super volcanoes, asteroids, comets, droughts, solar disruptions, Tsunamis, and floods have all been the last straw that took out a species in the past. Mankind may not have an obligation to save these species, but something tells me that if we have the power to, and the technology, then we ought to try, and give it our best shot. Please consider all this.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes it's hard work to write 21,300 articles; http://www.bloggingcontent.net/
Lance Winslow - EzineArticles Expert Author