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Published online 25 June 2008 | Nature 453, 1164-1168 (2008) | doi:10.1038/4531164a
News Feature
Planetary science: The burger bar that saved the world
Fewer people are searching for near-Earth asteroids, astronomer David Morrison said in the 1990s, than work a shift in a small McDonalds. But that group - a little larger now - has over the past two decades discovered a host of happily harmless rocks, and in doing so reduced the risk of an unknown asteroid blighting civilization (see page 1178). David Chandler puts together the story in the words of those who watched, and those who watched the watchers.
Clark Chapman: About 60 years ago, there were some prescient things written by Ernst Öpik, by Ralph Baldwin, and by Fletcher Watson. Only a handful of near-Earth asteroids had been discovered, but they came up with order-of-magnitude-correct understandings about how often a bad thing would happen.
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