Planetary Defense

PLANETARY DEFENSE
"Let's do the time warp again" (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Planetary defense involves the protection of Earth from extra-terrestrial (ET) or cosmic threats which are usually categorized into two main groups: (1) alien invaders; or (2) near-Earth objects, such as asteroids, meteoroids, or comets. Sometimes, other threats are included as an additional category called (3) planetary emergencies, which the Ettore Majorana Foundation and World Federation of Scientists (links below) say consist of extreme weather or seismic events as well as terrorism threats such as super- or cyber-terrorism. It is the intent of this lecture to draw attention to the fact that much of the stuff of science fiction is a deadly serious subject matter.

The intentions and capabilities of alien invaders are anyone's guess, but so-called impact events have the capability of causing mass extinction on a global scale, or in other words, the end of civilization, sometimes abbreviated as TEOLAWKI (The End of Life as We Know It). In fact, it is certain that events in space will eventually, one day, in cosmic time, cause life on Earth (and ultimately the whole universe) to end. Stellar evolution theory holds that our planet's sun will eventually become a red giant in about 5 billion years and engulf the Earth. That seems like a long time away, but it's mostly theory that is making that estimate. Astronomical research is just now beginning to show that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a very dangerous place. Our whole galaxy itself is due to collide with a massive gas cloud, called Smith's Cloud, before our sun burns out. Then, there's the predicted return of the comet Genondahwayanung (of Ojibwa Indian legend) which pretty much annihilated most life in North America when it came here the first time 13,000 years ago. Nearby stars, like Eta Carinae and the WR 104 binary system seem unstable of late and may explode any day now into a supernova, hitting us with a devastating gamma ray burst (gamma ray bursts being common in other galaxies) the likes of which caused the Permian extinction which wiped out 90% of life on Earth in one day. Further, our galaxy is known to contain several stellar-mass black holes which seem to pop out of nowhere and put the Earth at risk of being sucked into an inescapable gravity whirlpool. Then, there is the risk of numerous asteroids, meteoroids, or comets hitting the Earth. These can be deflected, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that deflection strategies exist. Finally, little thought is given to the scenario of alien invasion. What's needed for this scenario is warfare planning (for fighting the aliens) and/or exopolitics (for establishing political relations with the aliens).

Planetary defense needs to be taken seriously. A serious discussion needs to take place addressing these kinds of threats on their own merits, without requiring that such discussion bears fruit for collateral understanding of other emergency management principles. This is a flaw in recent books on the subject, such as Taylor et. al.'s (2006) Introduction to Planetary Defense, which tries to apply ET invasion scenarios to the principles of asymmetric warfare. Planetary defense is a new and underdeveloped field of study. It is too soon to be making generalizations to other fields. If there is some side benefit, that's wonderful, but these kinds of global problems deserve a vertical approach to their own security implications.

The first step in planetary defense is detection. An early-warning system is necessary. Since 1992, NASA has been tasked to map at least 90% of all near-Earth objects. To date, a number of different programs are involved in this task, all falling under the umbrella of what is called the Spaceguard Project (see website: Spaceguard Central Node). Although the Spaceguard Project started off as an American entity, subsequent Spaceguard associations or foundations have formed in many countries, all supporting the idea of discovering and studying near-Earth objects. Several universities around the world also have near-Earth object study centers. An example is the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program which is part of both NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and uses an Air Force telescope in Hawaii and the Mt. Palomar telescope in California. NASA and the Air Force have also teamed up in the LINEAR Project. In addition, all branches of the military (and many other agencies) are involved in space surveillance. Proposals to expand the Spaceguard Project have been mostly rejected. NASA, for example, only spends $4 million on the project, but the magnitude of risk merits a much larger budget. Twenty-five (25) early warning sites currently exist, as represented in the map below:

There are also a number of projects to search for extra-terrestrial life. The most well-known of these are the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) projects. Basically, they work by listening for radio signals from outer space with radio telescopes, omnidirectional antenna, and parabolic reflectors. From 1963 to 1998, the largest of the SETI radio telescopes was the Big Ear, located on the campus of Ohio State University. In 1977, it picked up a 72-second signal (called "the Wow signal") on the 1420 MHz frequency apparently from somewhere in the Sagittarius constellation. The source of the "Wow" signal has never been heard from again, even though astronomers have looked for it dozens of times. To astronomers like Melia (2007), Sagittarius is interesting because it is where the galactic center lies (the rotational center of the Milky Way), a supermassive black hole existing in the exact center (the nearest one to Earth), and another black hole co-existing nearby. To physicists like Thorne (1995) and Hawking et. al. (2003), black holes are interesting for two reasons: one, going through them may lead to another dimension; and two, harnessing their power around the event horizon (the area surrounding a black hole) may allow rapid "wormhole" space travel as well as the possibility of time travel.

There are a number of other SETI and SETI-like projects. Worthy of mention are attempts to send (not just receive) signals into outer space. For example, binary data containing our number system and a crude graphic of man have been beamed toward the nearby M13 cluster in the Hercules constellation. It is vastly less expensive to look for and send signals than to attempt contact by spaceship or probes, but it takes several years for radio signals to reach their destination. Any intelligent alien life out there would surely have technology that surpasses the limitations of ordinary radio signals. Hence, to account for that, Earth researchers have set up Project SERENDIP (Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations). Since the 1990s, SERENDIP has operated in three countries (the U.S., Australia, and Italy) using advanced spectral monitoring across many frequencies and channels. Spectral monitoring can detect water vapor, other signs of life, and all sorts of signals. In 2004, SERENDIP discovered a rather continuous, weak, and mysterious signal on radio source SHGb02+14a (circa 1420 MHz) coming from a planet between the constellations of Aries and Pisces. There are a number of conjectures about radio source SHGb02+14. For example, it is being sent on a channel that one would expect intelligent life to use, and the way the signal drifts indicates it is coming from a planet orbiting its sun about 40 times faster than Earth rotates. Recent 2007 SERENDIP discoveries include the Gliese 581 planet (which is actually in a known habitable zone), and a promising star cluster with a solar system like ours called 55 Cancri. It should be noted that SERENDIP has been mostly a private project piggybacking upon the volunteer work of home computer users participating in the SETI@Home grid computing project who donate their CPU and RAM resources online.

Much could be written about the politics of SETI computation projects. Unfortunately, no one has written a book about it. Employees have been getting fired since 2004 for using their work computers; home users regularly get in trouble with their Internet service providers; and the culture as a whole tends to attract hackers interested in the ultimate hack. As of 2006, there has been zero government funding for SETI projects of any kind, although there are small components of recurring support within the National Science Foundation. SETI has many critics, and even more controversial is a branch of SETI research known as CETI (Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Here, even supporters of SETI research say the messages we have broadcast so far have been all wrong. Ever since the M13 broadcast, Earth has sent simple diagrams, maps, and the chemical formula which make up key parts of our DNA structure. Any aliens receiving these signals would likely think we are morons, and an aggressive species might welcome the sharing of how to destroy our DNA molecules. Dr. Frank Drake (creator of the Drake Equation which estimates the actual possibility of extraterrestrial life) has been at the forefront of CETI concerns for sending more intelligent and friendly messages.

Our galaxy consists of numerous asteroids and meteoroids (and comets) in various orbits. They represent "dumb threats" because we know they're coming (it's just a matter of time) and we're not doing much to prepare for it. The vast majority of asteroids stay within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. However, there are several which make potentially close approaches to Earth, and NASA calls these "Potentially Hazardous Asteroids" and there are 912 of them at present. This is out of a universe of over 7000 "Near Earth Objects" traveling about in space.
Although the chances of an asteroid strike on Earth are pretty rare, near-misses are significant in that they almost always create some degree of electromagnetic interference in the Earth's magnetosphere much like Tunguska did 100 years ago. Tunguska events can involve natural disasters, firestorms, and unknown effects. Only a few scientists dare to speculate about the unknown effects, the most likely ones being plasma discharge (aka "magnetic reconnection") or geomagnetic storms fueling, among other things, an increase in the Northern Lights, or a tenuous excitation of nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our atmosphere. Strong thermonuclear bursts were associated with the Tungunska event.

Meteoroids stay in space for the most part, damaging spacecraft and satellites, except when they take on a trajectory toward Earth and become meteorites. 500 meteorites strike the Earth's surface every year, but only 5 or 6 are typically recovered, and none are usually larger than a basketball. The probability of a comet impact is less than that of an asteroid or meteoroid, although comets tends to come much faster and therefore pose a greater warning threat. Comets tend to generate in the Oort Cloud Field out beyond Pluto, and since the sun periodically passes through a galactic plane with the Oort Field, contact is made with molecular clouds dislodging comets which are generally thought to constitute around 1 percent of the risk of catastrophic collision. Hard-to-spot "dark comets" are also a possibility. Dark comets do not sport showy ejection tails. Easier to see are the common asteroids larger than the size of an average city. NASA is coming up with a Richter-like scale (the Torino Impact Scale) for ranking the risks from near-Earth objects, but generally anything coming within 0.05 AU of Earth is potentially hazardous (an AU or Astronomical Unit is 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers, the average distance between Earth and the sun). Although there is no standard vocabulary for when something comes too close, and few asteroids today are known to be on a collision course with Earth, below are some selected examples of what might be called near-misses:

Near-Miss Asteroid Collisions

Geographos -- an elongated Earth-orbit-like asteroid first detected in 1951, last passing Earth in 1994.
Toutatis -- an eccentric, city-sized asteroid first discovered in 1989 which travels just inside Earth's orbit to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, passing Earth closely about every twelve years.
Castalia -- a dumbell-shaped, near-Earth crossing asteroid first detected in 1989.
Vesta -- a large (size of the state of Arizona) asteroid (or minor planet) which travels in the asteroid belt and regularly spins off chunks of itself into the Kirkwood Gap (an asteroid-free zone around Jupiter) where Jupiter's gravity turns these chunks into meteroids (Vesta is the source of most meteorites found on Earth).
Golevka -- a small, dense, and reflective Mars-crossing asteroid first detected in 1995 that passes passes 0.034 AU from Earth at a declination of ~40 deg.
WT24 -- a Mercury/Venus/Earth-crossing asteroid which was radar detected in 2001, and passes Earth at a distance of 0.0125 AU with a declination of 42deg.
Apophis -- a 1000 ft. wide asteroid that orbits our Sun, came close to hitting Earth in 2004, and is scheduled to come back towards Earth, within 18,300 miles of us in 2029 and again, with a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth on April 13, 2036. Scientists plan to launch a probe to monitor it by 2014 [see astronomical predictions about Apophis]
1950 DA -- unless rotation changes its course, this asteroid is on a direct collision course with Earth and will likely strike in the year 2880.
2007 WD5 -- a Tunguska-size asteroid discovered in Nov. 2007 with a 1:75 chance of hitting Mars on Jan. 30, 2008.
2007 TU24 -- a Near-Earth Object discovered in Oct, 2007 coming 334,000 miles from Earth on Jan. 29, 2008.

There are many thousands of undiscovered Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). With so many undiscovered ones, the most likely warning today would be zero, the first indication of a collision being a flash of light and a shaking of the ground as it hits. On the other hand, if the Spaceguard Project or some other program detects something on a collision course, we may have several years of warning, possibly even decades. NASA surmises that any NEO that is going to hit the Earth will swing near our planet many times before it strikes, and it should be discovered by comprehensive sky searches like Spaceguard. A large object striking Earth would inject huge quantities of dust into the stratosphere, depress temperatures around the globe, and lead to massive crop loss and the possible breakdown of society. The death toll would, of course, depend upon where the impact site is, but a National Geographic special on Killer Asteroids estimates the average death count could be anywhere from 500,000 to 1.5 billion casualties.

In the case of an extinction or near-extinction event (a large asteroid on a colllision course toward Earth that cannot be deflected), the most salient questions are to ask if there may be impact survivors, and whether or not there is an ethical obligation to inform the public as soon as necessary so to increase the chances of human survival? Geoffrey Sommer, a disaster expert at RAND, who has written a dissertation entitled Astronomical Odds: A Policy Framework for the Cosmic Impact Hazard, is often quoted in this regard as saying the best policy is NOT to inform the public, under most circumstances. He has said: "When a problem arises with high uncertainty, there is an opportunity to spin the problem to avoid global panic. If you can't do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all. If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss. As a matter of common sense, if you can't intercept it and you can't move people out of the way in time, there's nothing you can do in terms of reducing the costs of the potential impact. Overreaction not just by the public but by policy-makers scurrying around before the thing actually hits because we can't do anything about it anyway ... to a large extent you are better off not adding to your social costs."

A relatively minor push on a typical NEO when it is nearest the sun will result in its orbit being changed sufficiently to safely miss the Earth. The most successful technique would likely involve explosion of a nuclear weapon at (or above) the surface of a NEO. However, researchers in the U.S., Japan, China, India, and Russia (all countries which have expressed interest in planetary defense) have come up with some other ideas, such as using solar sails (a solar sail - picture here - is a spacecraft without an engine) to deflect asteroids, planting propulsion systems on asteroids (called NEA-tug) to de-rotate them and push them out of harm's way in tugboat fashion, and/or using plasma, ion, or laser beams. The Europeans seem to favor the idea of crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to alter its course (see European Space Agency's Don Quijote Project). Wikipedia has an interesting and growing entry on Asteroid Deflection Strategies, but it is too soon to put together a list in any order that would make much sense. Suffice it to say that ideas are at the very early stages of thought creation.

With regard to aliens (the "smart threat"), the matter of which mitigation technique is best depends upon how the First Contact scenario plays out, as these early moments may be all we have to determine intent. "First Contact" is an anthropological term describing the implications when a technologically advanced civilization meets a less advanced civilization for the first time. It can be safely assumed that any aliens who contact or visit us will be technologically advanced. If the anthropological history of first contacts here on Earth is any guide, a lot of us are likely to catch some disease and die, not the other way around as in science fiction movies. There are always dire consequences for the less advanced civilization. Additionally, the theological implications are enormous, of course, but Michaud (2006) has begun a list of some important First Contact questions, which are paraphrased as follows:

Will the alien language be comprehensible?
Will they be generous in sharing information?
Will their knowledge help solve our problems?
Will we be willing to adopt their ideas?
Will contact help unify mankind?
Will they be morally superior?
Will they have their own religion?
Will they mean what they say?
Will they treat us fairly?
Will they be territorial?
Will they be aggressive?
Will we be able to protect ourselves?
Will our distance protect us?

The above list is sensible and leaves off ridiculous items like "Will they use us for food?" but leaves in the colonialism or enslavement possibility by asking if they would be territorial or not. Chances are they would need some of our resources since even an advanced space-travelling species might resupply itself as it travels. The most important question may be whether they are benevolent or aggressive, or something in-between, since it is entirely probable that any advanced civilization would at least want to share or spread its culture, thus "civilizing" or saving us from ourselves. Exopolitical analysts often disagree about what an alien agenda regarding humankind would be, but Marrs (2000) supports the idea that they would at minimum be interested in exerting some influence over us (noting that Marrs bases this idea on conspiracy theories about alien abductions, alleged experiments with humans, and other UFO-ology). Who knows? There is a lot of science fiction about alien invasion, and odds are some of it may end up having some truth to it, with aliens looking like they do in Huyghe's (1996) book or appearing to us as angels as in Craft's (1996) book. What's missing is any serious academic discussion about what to do if it turns out our "visitors" are hostile.

Taylor et. al. (2006) are dead serious about dealing with hostile aliens. Travis Taylor and his main co-author Bob Boan hold advanced degrees and have been consultants in the aerospace and defense industries. They argue the most important thing during First Contact is effective communication with the aliens. The ability to communicate with them in their own language will be a deciding factor in determining if they are hostile or friendly. One should not blindly trust interpreters when the stakes are this high, and we cannot afford to wait several months to learn their language. Once communications is established, we need to work out a coexistence agreement or treaty of some sort, reminding the aliens that we have laws and protocols for negotiating with the proper officials. Immediate calls for surrender should be dealt with by negotiation. At one time (from 1969-1991), the U.S. had a set of laws dealing with alien contact, as with Section 1211 of Title 14 (Code of Federal Regulations), also known as the "Alien Exposure Law" which was intended to protect citizens from alien biohazards. Taylor et. al. (2006) go a bit further than this, recommending not only communication between proper emissaries, but the necessity of keeping most of the public in the dark.

In fact, Taylor et. al. (2006) devote an entire chapter to why the public must be kept in the dark, asking the question "Is there a public need to know about an impending alien invasion?" They answer in the negative, their reasoning being that it would give authorities a tactical advantage if the aliens came to believe we did not know about them (a useful subterfuge). If information were released to the public, the aliens would definitely know we knew about them. Besides, there is little or nothing that an individual or uncoordinated group of individuals could accomplish against aggressive aliens. The element of surprise may very well be our most effective weapon against the invaders. Negotiations alongside military preparations should all be kept TOP SECRET until the last minute possible, and then the whole human race should be enlisted in the war effort, and then only if it comes down to infantry warfare. Only when the survival of the whole human race is at stake should the public be told. A complicating factor is whether to share information gained about the aliens with other governments. For example, assume mankind managed to obtain some of their advanced technology, should it be shared with all governments, or just our allies? Taylor et. al. (2006) say just our allies; no alien technology for enemies. It should be added that Taylor et. al. (2006) believe U.S. officials should handle everything, not the U.N. nor NATO. Another complicating factor is theology since the aliens are unlikely to prefer any of our theologies, and some of our religious leaders may unwisely call for theological warfare against the aliens on various religious grounds. It is unlikely that an alien visitation would unite all of mankind.

There are some other safe assumptions which can be made. Any intelligent alien invaders would likely have communications technology far superior to ours. They could easily take over our command and control systems, jam our communications networks, knock out our computer systems, and force us back into a Revolutionary War era using runners and paper documents. The psychological impact of this might be formidable. The invaders would also likely have superior propulsion technology, easily gaining air superiority as well as the possibility of harnessing Q-type (a character from Star Trek) powers to travel across dimensions, time, and vast distances of space. In addition, it is quite likely that the aliens will have different rules of engagement and may not believe in treating captured or surrendered forces humanely. It is further likely that the aliens will show up as part of some plan and not as some random accidental stumbling upon Earth. All this, and superior weaponry (such as transport devices, gravity modifiers, shields, nanotechnology, mind control, and who knows what else), make fighting the aliens no easy task.

The best hope for mankind in an unwinnable fight are the tactics of evasion, hiding, enduring, learning, planning, and escaping. Those are the things one does if they don't stand a chance. Once our conventional forces are decimated and our arsenal of WMD is depleted (with Taylor et. al. recommending use of our WMD arsenal early on), any actual fighting by humans would have to be in the nature of guerrilla warfare, starting off with small ambushes combined with attempts to harness their technology to fight or escape with. The fight would have to be dragged out over a long period of time to increase our odds. Troops would have to be sacrificed, and hidden second and third tier troops will have to be prepared for battle. Denial and deception operations would have to be implemented. Suicide attacks might become necessary, and as a last resort, we would have to make ourselves and our planet undesirable, although not to the point of annihilating ourselves. Taylor et. al. (2006) actually have a battle plan made up, as below:

The above plan is a multiple front, second-wave strategy allowing for mankind to win over the alien invaders given a couple of factors worth pointing out: one, a strong replenishment rate among the human blue team (Taylor et. al. recommending women stay continually pregnant); and two, the possibility of desertions among the alien red team (although Taylor et. al. do not discuss how to win over the "hearts and minds" of the aliens). Other than that, there are advantages to keeping the ET threat off our soil. Keeping them in orbit may cause them to use up precious resources. If the aliens attempted to make contact by using disguises (infiltrating or pretending to look like us), then this is surely a sign that they are unsure of their military capability and must have some weaknesses. In the case of an overtly aggressive alien, we should adopt the philosophy of shoot first, shoot big, and shoot often. In the case of absolute failure, we should ask the aliens to transport some portion of our species to another habitable planet somewhere else in the universe. This assumes, of course, the aliens are more interested in our planetary real estate than in exterminating our species. It is to our benefit, as a species, to survive somewhere than not at all, and in fact, an alternative "surrender plan" should be constructed in the face of overwhelming, superior alien force.

PRINTED RESOURCES
Ahrens, T. & Harris, A. (1992) "Deflection and fragmentation of near-Earth asteroids." Nature 360: 429-433.
Craft, M. (1997). Alien impact. NY: Tor Books.
Hawking, S., Thorne, K., Novikov, I., Ferris, T. & Lightman, A. (2003). The future of spacetime. NY: Norton.
Heidmann, J. (1997). Extraterrestrial intelligence. NY: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Huyghe, P. (1996). A field guide to extraterrestrials. NY: Avon Books.
Lewis, J. (1996). Rain of fire and ice: The very real threat of comet and asteroid bombardment. NY: Addison-Wesley.
Marrs, J. (2000). Alien agenda. NY: Harper.
McConnell, B. (2001). Beyond contact: A guide to SETI and communicating with aliens. Cambridge, MA: O'Reilly.
Melia, F. (2007). The galactic supermassive black hole. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Michaud, M. (2006). Contact with alien civilizations. NY: Springer.
Sagan, C. (1973). Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Salla, M. (2004). Exopolitics: The political implications of the extraterrestrial presence. Tempe, AZ: Dandelion Books.
Steel, D. (1995). Rogue asteroids and doomsday comets. NY: Wiley.
Taylor, T., Boan, B., Anding, R. & Powell, T. (2006). An introduction to planetary defense: A study of modern warfare applied to extra-terrestrial invasion. Boca Raton, FL: BrownWalker Press.
Thorne, K. (1995). Black holes and time warps. NY: Norton.

Last updated: Aug 24, 2008
Not an official webpage of APSU, copyright restrictions apply, see Megalinks in Criminal Justice
O'Connor, T. (Date of Last Update at bottom of page). In Part of web cited (Windows name for file at top of browser), MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/rest of URL accessed on today's date.