color="#FFFFFF" size="2">Back to National News Digest Sunday,
June 7, 1998 Last modified at 1:34 a.m. on Sunday, June 7, 1998
Kinder, gentler asteroid warnings sought IRVINE, Calif. (AP) -
Following March's false alarm about an asteroid coming
dangerously close to Earth in the 21st century and two Hollywood
summer blockbusters about cosmic collisions, experts met
Saturday to plan asteroid warnings that won't trigger panic.
"Collisions with the Earth is a topic that is so prone to
sensationalism that we must be extremely careful about how we
communicate new discoveries," said Richard P. Binzel, a
planetary science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. "It took the (March) event to wake us up." A March
11 report that Asteroid 1997XF11 was headed to within 30,000
miles of Earth's center - and could hit - in October 2028 was
front page news and the top story on evening TV news broadcasts.
The report from the International Astronomical Union was quickly
debunked by astronomers at NASA's Jet Propu