Scientist: Disaster films can help raise public awareness

Molly Ball

Saturday, Jan. 1, 2005 | 9:01 a.m.

On a recent episode of TV's "The West Wing," the president had just 46 hours to deal with a giant asteroid headed for Earth. In the movie "Armageddon," the world had about two weeks.

Many scientists scoff at such scenarios -- and the preposterous solutions that rescue the planet every time.

Not Las Vegas scientist Ted Hartwell.

"Although scientists cringe, and focus on what's presented inaccurately" on film, "the potential for public service is invaluable," said Hartwell, a Desert Research Institute archaeologist.

Hartwell has written a research paper on the science and culture behind asteroid movies. Presented at an international conference in November, his research takes the contrarian stance that the scientific community should welcome blockbusters such as "Deep Impact," even if they aren't 100 percent accurate.

"Scientists can whine all they want, but there has been a real effort on the part of some filmmakers to incorporate legitimate scientific knowledge in these films," Hartwell said. "It is incumbent on scientists to use these movies as targets of opportunity to educate the public."

But whine they do. Astronomer Phil Plait of Sonoma State University devotes a section of his Web site, www.badastronomy.com, to ticking off egregious flaws of science fiction movies.

"Movies like this introduce the 'giggle factor,' " exaggerating a real threat to the point of absurdity, Plait said.

"Asteroids are a serious issue, and it doesn't take one very big to kill millions of people or ruin our climate," he said. "If you don't think it's a serious problem, ask a dinosaur.

"Oh wait, you can't ask a dinosaur -- they're all dead."

The Web site's section on "Armageddon" is one of its longest and most aggrieved in tone. Among Plait's complaints: The asteroid is too big to be plausible; given its size, it would have been spotted 200 years, not two weeks, in advance; its shape is jagged when it should be spherical; its gravity is represented inconsistently; it could never have been blown up by a single bomb, not even one planted by Bruce Willis.

" 'Armageddon' got some astronomy right," Plait wrote. "There is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids do exist ... That was about all they got right."

But to Hartwell, just showing people that asteroids exist is a step in the right direction. The majority of recent depictions of near-Earth objects, as scientists call them, nail the three most important aspects on the head:

"The main points are there," he said.

His paper points out the depictions have improved.

From the 1930s to 1994, 83 percent of movies and TV shows about Earth-bound objects portrayed them as dangerous because they gave off "strange mutating radiations or energies" that "transform the hapless individuals they come in contact with into monsters," he said. Often, they brought scary aliens to Earth.

Since 1994, when the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smashed into Jupiter, the quantity and quality of Earth-impact programming increased. Nearly half over the last 10 years has focused on the real danger of impact.

Public awareness is needed because, while chances are slender that one will hit, the potential damage such an object could wreak is enormous, Hartwell said.

The impact of a huge asteroid -- 10 to 20 miles in diameter -- is thought to have caused the diosaurs' extinction 65 million years ago. Most scientists believe the impact kicked up debris to cause a prolonged global cooling, starving 95 percent of land species when plants could no longer grow.

In 1908 a relatively small object, about 30 feet in diameter, is believed to have exploded over Siberia, leveling about 800 square miles of forest in a blast hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Space rocks that large or larger are estimated to hit Earth every 200 to 500 years. With today's technology, however, we can see them decades or even centuries in advance.

And we had better. If one were to hit water -- three-quarters of the Earth's surface -- it could cause another tsunami.

If it were to hit a city, the death toll could be in the millions. (The 1908 asteroid affected such a sparsely populated area that only a few reindeer herders died.)

"While (a near-earth object) is a relatively low-risk type of natural hazard, it has a relatively great effect," Hartwell said.

That's why when insurance companies calculate the risk out over a number of years, asteroid impact is said to cause about 100 deaths per year -- more than shark attacks.

And that's why scientists say it is crucial to keep track of what's out there. November's International Council for Science conference in the Canary Islands, at which Hartwell presented his research, was devoted all aspects of a potential impact.

Currently, the international Space- guard Foundation has about $2 million in annual funding to devote to research the threat.

The foundation coordinates a worldwide network of amateur astronomers who have cataloged about 70 percent of the detectable asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter -- about three-fifths of a mile -- that could threaten Earth.

That's not good enough, Hartwell and others say. With about $120 million, 95 percent of asteroids 100 meters in diameter or larger could be accounted for within just a few years.

But for governments to cough up that kind of money, John Q. Public must be aware of the issue. That, Hartwell maintains, is where Hollywood comes in.

"Even if we (scientists) had that kind of money" -- $100 million, the budget of a major blockbuster -- "we could never reach as much of the general public as one of those movies."

But scientists can ride the coattails of such movies, using them to get people interested in the real danger of near-Earth objects, he said.

People could use the education. A 2001 study found that less than half of American adults knew that people did not coexist with the dinosaurs, and about 55 percent knew that the Earth goes around the sun once a year.

What is the danger of an asteroid hitting? There is one asteroid bigger than 1 square kilometer, or 0.4 of a square mile, that has a 1 in 300 chance of impact in about 800 years.

Let's say it does hit. First, there would be a thermal flash at the speed of light that would fry everything within sight. Next, it would cause seismic shaking of a large earthquake.

Then it would unleash a shockwave of rippling air, similar to what a nuclear bomb does. Then burning rocks would start raining from the sky -- the ejecta, or blasted-off pieces, of the asteroid falling back down.

It sounds a lot like a horror movie.

As in many a horror movie, the best solution is probably to push the asteroid off course, with rocket thrusters or a giant reflective "solar sail."

"You don't have to divert it much to make it miss Earth by a lot, but you have to push hard for a long time to have any effect," Hartwell said.

His research points to archaeological evidence -- pottery, cave paintings, etc. -- that show our ancestors witnessed comets and the impacts of meteorites and asteroids. These made a deep impression, and stories of them were passed down, he writes.

Now, we don't look to the sky as much, he said. Instead, movies are our collective memory, reminding us of things that, while they may not have occurred in our lifetime, still lurk in the universe's vast arsenal.

"Because of pop culture, I think they (near-Earth objects) are something that's going to stay in the public consciousness," Hartwell said. And for that, scientists should be grateful.