What's the fuss?
Steel, the British astronomer and writer, simply doesn't see what all the fuss is about. Scientists typically do their best to give accurate statements, he said, but obviously they don't control the media.
"This is always like having a tiger by the tail. All one can do is to try to direct the tiger's run as best one can, but one is never in control," Steel said. "What's best, a wild tiger or one under at least a little control, slowed down by us pulling its tail?"
Steel does see a place to lay some blame, however. Much of it falls on the shoulders of politicians, who he says have abrogated their responsibility by preventing the creation of a coherent international asteroid search effort.
"We most likely have bigger problems to face, but if there is a 1-kilometer [0.62-mile-wide] asteroid due to hit us in ten years' time, then we have no greater problem: not AIDS, not famine, not disease, not terror, not nuclear war."
Steel says "an ad hoc and fallible piecemeal NEO community" is doing its best. The United States does by far the most, "but less than should be done," he said. And astronomers generally agree that by 2008 they will have found most of the large (1-kilometer) NEOs and will need to build new telescopes to search for smaller NEOs. No funding has been earmarked for that effort, however.
"Elsewhere various nations have acted shamefully, disgracefully, most especially the two countries of which I am a citizen: the UK and Australia," Steel said.
Jonathan Tate, founder and director of Spaceguard UK, a group that advocates increased search funding, agrees that the unrealistic specter of doom dominates some stories. He says scientists are trapped: "Withhold information and we are accused of conspiracy. Release raw data ASAP and the media either add two and two to make five or accuse us of scare mongering."
However, Tate said scientists who provide colorful quotes "are doing so to generate action by the government, action that is sorely lacking." Tate further believes that the spin put on the situation by U.S. scientists "is a bit too complacent. They are beginning a campaign to convince the rest of the world that the U.S. has the problem under control."
Asteroid hunters in the United States say they are well aware of the threat. They readily admit that Earth sits in a cosmic shooting gallery, and that one day the planet could be rocked by a devastating impact. That's what has driven the search so far, a search first proposed a decade ago in the United States and then undertaken by NASA under Congressional direction.
But the American scientists also know talking to reporters can be tricky.
How the frenzy began
"Perhaps we've all been guilty at one time or another of colorful quotes in describing NEO phenomena, and the media certainly tries their best to extract such quotes," said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. "The goal, I suppose, is to be at the same time sober, informative but not too nerdy."
Yeomans had a unique view of the whole media frenzy over 2002 NT7. He and colleagues "did not think that this object warranted any proactive news releases," so he was unprepared when "the media blitz struck."
Various BBC reporters from different wings of the organization called him early last week.
"Most of the six interviews I did with BBC reporters Tuesday night began with their assumption that there would be a collision," Yeomans said. "One is then forced to back up and try to explain the real situation and the fact that there is not really a story here. They didn't wish to hear that."
Yeomans then watched as the stories (with his cautious quotes often subordinated to others) spun out of control, begetting more reporters' calls and flooding JPL's online asteroid pages to the extent that at one point even he couldn't view them.
Yeomans now says journalists and scientists both need to redouble efforts to help the public understand how asteroid risks are determined.
"There is plenty of blame to go around," he said.
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