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To prepare for the unlikely event of an asteroid or comet colliding with the
Earth, a British government task force has suggested that European nations
should build a 3-metre telescope in the southern hemisphere to track all nearby
objects more than 300 metres in diameter. This would complement existing
US-based efforts that focus on objects larger than 1 kilometre across in the
northern hemisphere. “An asteroid hit would be a catastrophe that we must not
let happen,” says Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.