[meteorite-list] International Monitoring System and the crash of meteoroids from outer space

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:44:13 2004
Message-ID: <20010619225435.10030.qmail_at_web10402.mail.yahoo.com>

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 10:44:23 -0400
From: Lew Gramer <dedalus_at_latrade.com>
Subject: (meteorobs) Excerpt from "CCNet 80/2001 - 19
June 2001"

- ------- Forwarded Message

From: Peiser Benny <B.J.Peiser_at_livjm.ac.uk>
To: cambridge-conference
<cambridge-conference_at_livjm.ac.uk>
Subject: CCNet 80/2001 - 19 June 2001
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 11:57:06 +0100

CCNet 80/2001 - 19 June 2001
- ---------------------------

(3) USEFUL LEGACY OF NUCLEAR TREATY: GLOBAL EARPHONES

>From The New York Times, 19 June 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/19/science/19NUKE.html

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Though the Senate voted two years ago to reject a
treaty that bans nuclear testing, one of its
provisions is alive and thriving: the global network
of sensors meant to listen for clandestine nuclear
blasts.

Though still under construction, the International
Monitoring System is already yielding a wealth of
science spinoffs, detecting violent winds, volcanic
eruptions and the crash of meteoroids from outer
space.

"It's a vast new tool," said Hank Bass, director of
the National Center for Physical Acoustics, based at
the University of Mississippi. "For the first time,
we'll have a global system of microphones listening to
the atmosphere of the planet."

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty calls for 90
countries to be host to a network of 321 stations
whose sensors monitor the land, sea and air for faint
vibrations and other telltale signs of nuclear blasts.
More than 100 stations are now relaying data by
satellite and cable to Vienna, where 220 people work
at the system's headquarters.

Despite the Senate rebuff in 1999, the United States
is a major backer of the monitoring system. It pays
about a quarter of the total costs, and United States
technical and scientific support is regarded as
crucial to the network's success.

Earlier this year, some treaty opponents tried to halt
the financial aid, saying the ban's goals were
illusory or contrary to American interests. But its
backers fought back vigorously, led in part by Senator
James M. Jeffords of Vermont, whose defection from the
Republican Party put Democrats in control of the
Senate earlier this month. Battles over the monitoring
system continue in Washington, and it is unclear if
American support will continue.

Experts on both sides say the existence of an
effective monitoring system, which its proponents see
as central to treaty policing, would increase the
chances that the accord might one day be revived.

In all, the surveillance system is to have 170
stations that detect underground shock waves, 11 that
track undersea explosions, 80 that sniff the air for
telltale radioactivity and 60 that listen for
revealing sounds in the atmosphere, including winds
and shock waves.

Dr. Gerardo Suarez, a geophysicist from Mexico who
directs the International Monitoring System in Vienna,
said the emerging network was starting to excite
experts far beyond the world of arms control. "The
scientific community is awakening to the enormous
possibilities," he said in an interview.

Interested groups, he said, include the World
Meteorological Organization, which wants wind data for
global weather forecasting, and the World Health
Organization, which wants to track radioactivity in
the atmosphere.

"It's a tremendous challenge," Dr. Suarez said of
building the global network. "There's never been
anything like it. We have stations from the Arctic to
Antarctica."

New additions to the surveillance system include
ground-based microphones that listen to the air for
low- frequency sounds far below the range of human
hearing. Dr. Douglas Christy, head of the acoustic
group in Vienna, said that by the end of the year some
20 of the 60 sound stations will be operational.

"Things are moving along very rapidly," he said. "It's
hectic. But we're happy with it."

On April 23, the fledgling system detected a speeding
meteoroid that crashed into the atmosphere over the
Pacific, where it produced a blast nearly as powerful
as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In the past, such explosions often escaped notice
because they usually occur over the sea or uninhabited
lands. The new information will help scientists
calculate how often these strikes occur and the odds
of "doomsday rocks" hitting the planet.

Today, the International Monitoring System and its
member states are keeping the data private among
themselves until global agreements can be made for its
wider release, Dr. Suarez said. A few nations, he
said, fear that improper analysis of the data might
confuse small explosions in the mining or construction
industries with clandestine nuclear blasts.

Preliminary work on the monitoring system began in
late 1996 after the treaty was opened for signature
and has been accelerating ever since. In the United
States, the Defense Department does much of the work.

Treaty opponents have argued that small blasts can
elude the monitoring system and that America might one
day need to test its old nuclear arms or design new
ones.

When the Senate in 1999 rejected the treaty,
conservative Republicans tried, but failed, to cut the
monitoring funds as well.

Early this year, just after President Bush took
office, they launched a new drive. On March 12,
Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who
then was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,
wrote the State Department to urge that the United
States remove its signature from the test-ban treaty
and "terminate funding" for its organizations,
including the network of sensors.

On April 4, 10 Senate Republicans, including Mr. Helms
and Trent Lott of Mississippi, then majority leader,
made the same argument to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the
defense secretary. "We urge you," they wrote, "to
terminate Defense Department efforts to implement the
treaty."

Treaty opponents call support for the system - or any
provision or organization called for in the treaty - a
surrogate for backing the treaty itself, which is why
they want the monitoring effort halted.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a former Pentagon official who
opposes the pact, said in an interview that the
monitoring is "a backdoor way to get us" into the
treaty. Mr. Gaffney, who directs the Center for
Security Policy, a private group in Washington, said
establishing the monitoring system "creates a rubric
in which a future administration might endorse the
treaty."

Senator Jeffords, a longtime treaty supporter, fought
back on April 6, urging Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell to persevere. "We must avoid any weakening of
our commitment to international nuclear test
monitoring," he wrote in a letter with Senator Lincoln
Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island.

A few weeks later, on May 10, Secretary Powell told
Congress that the Bush administration would seek $20
million for the test-ban work next year. That figure
is what the program office in Vienna had requested.

Secretary Powell is one of the few officials in the
Bush administration to have supported the Senate's
approval of the treaty, which he did in January 1998
along with three other former chairmen of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. Jeffords, in announcing his departure from
Republican ranks on May 24, made no mention of the
test ban or its monitoring. But aides said the topic
was one of many where he foresaw growing disagreements
with the Bush administration and Senate leaders.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to
Reduce Nuclear Dangers, a private group in Washington,
said the Senate's shift into Democratic hands will aid
the monitoring and "make life far more difficult for
the Dr. Strangelove caucus."

If the United States and the 159 other nations of the
treaty organization maintain their contributions,
construction of the monitoring system could be
completed by late 2005, Dr. Suarez said. That is
somewhat behind the schedule envisioned a few years
ago.

By late this year, he said, his team will have
finished surveying 90 percent of the proposed station
sites around the world, many of which lie in remote or
inhospitable regions.

In the United States, despite the political clash over
monitoring, 26 of 37 planned stations have already
been built, a Bush administration official said.

The White House might want to pull out of the
monitoring program after it finishes its reviews of
nuclear policy, the official added. But the president
and his aides, though largely treaty opponents, will
probably choose to avoid that step and the likely
uproar.

"The politics are really hairy," the official said.
"They may want to let it limp along because of its
high political profile."

Copyright 2001, The New York Times


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Received on Tue 19 Jun 2001 06:54:35 PM PDT