Tracking Possible Doom from AboveS  With so much focus on
corporate bailouts, climate change, and the threat of terrorism,
one source of potential disaster has gone sorely neglected:
asteroids. It's been ten years since Deep Impact and Armageddon
taught us the dire consequences of an asteroid colliding with
Earth, but experts say it's time to start taking seriously the
threat of objects from space.This week, the United Nation's
Association of Space Explorers (ASE) held a panel on Asteroid
Threat Mitigation to discuss the threat posed by near-Earth
objects (NEOs). An asteroid strike would have devastating and
lasting consequences:  A hit by even one of the smaller
[asteroid] rocks, say the size of a convenience store, would
have the impact of 400,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs exploding at
once, he says. The larger varieties (a mile or more in diameter)
could hit with as much force as millions of Hiroshima bombs,
with devastating planet-wide effects, such as tsunamis, damage
to the atmosphere, and radical climate