AssetID: 54706390
Headline: RAW VIDEO: Paranal Panic: How A Green Energy Project Could Stop Us Seeing The Next 'Armageddon' Asteroid
Caption: In February this year the world was left on tenterhooks after astronomers discovered a large asteroid with a significant chance of hitting the Earth in 2032. Thankfully, the possibility of real-life scenes resembling the movie Armageddon quickly passed - but next time we may not be so lucky. That’s because the telescope that the world’s top space scientists used to track the asteroid, 2024 YR4, is under threat. Sitting atop the Paranal mountain in Chile’s Atacama desert, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) is perfectly situated to stare into the cosmos due to the area’s pristine skies. However, all that is now under threat from the INNA megaproject - a massive industrial-scale green hydrogen project proposed by AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation. Situated just 11km from the VLT at its closest point, INNA is planned to cover an area the size of a small city. Scientists fear that not only will it harm one of their best spots for studying the skies, but it could mean we miss the chance to track the next threat coming from space. That’s because we only have a small window to track asteroids and judge their likelihood of impact before they become invisible from Earth. ESO Astronomer Olivier Hainaut warns: “With that brighter sky, the VLT would lose the faint 2024 YR4 about one month earlier, which would make a huge difference in our capability to predict an impact, and prepare mitigation measures to protect Earth.” In the case of 2024 YR4, Hainaut says that we were luckily able to rule out the possibility of a collision fairly swiftly - but next time it could be different, and a threatening asteroid could drop out of the sight of a VLT whose capabilities are damaged by light pollution. “The longer one observes, the better we know the orbit. In the case of YR4, we could ‘easily’ (for the VLT) observe it in January; it was still OK in February, difficult in March, very hard in April, and super challenging in May,” Hainaut explains. “Had the INNA project been already been built, it would have been impossible in May and challenging in April. “If the sky degrades, it (the VLT) will lose some of its reach,” he adds. “Consequently, some of the asteroids that are at or close to the limit of what we can observe will drop beyond the limit, and we will not be able to observe them anymore.” Hainaut goes on to say that this will make impact prediction “less reliable” - potentially harming a mitigation space mission like NASA’s DART programme - which aims to deflect asteroids out of an orbit that will strike Earth. He warns that while for some asteroids the impact upon our ability to track them will be “small” for others it will be “dramatic”. Dr. Noelia Noel of the School of Mathematics and Physics department at the University of Surrey says: “Crucially, it's lost vigilance: with a brighter sky, even tracking dangerous asteroids — the ones that could one day threaten Earth — becomes harder, slower, and riskier.” An in-depth technical analysis, led by ESO Director of Operations Andreas Kaufer and Martin Aubé, a world-leading expert on sky brightness at astronomical sites, has evaluated the impact of INNA. It revealed that it would increase light pollution above the VLT by at least 35% and by more than 50% above the south site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO-South). INNA would also increase air turbulence in the area, further degrading conditions for astronomical observations. Vibrations from the project could also seriously impair the functioning of some of the astronomical facilities at the Paranal Observatory. Laura Ventura of the ESO adds: “The INNA project, for its magnitude and proximity to ESO’s Paranal Observatory would cause a devastating and irreversible damage on this unique site and its pristine sky.” ESO scientists warn that the only measure that could truly mitigate the impact of the clean energy project would be to relocate it 50km away from the Observatory. It is not just our ability to spot dangerous asteroids that will be hindered should the ESO suffer light pollution but our ability to find new galaxies and even alien life. Dr. Noel explains: “The skies over Paranal are where we discovered new worlds — and where future generations could discover even more. I've built my career and mentored my students thanks to the Chilean observatories, especially Paranal. But now, a single industrial project could destroy that legacy forever.” Itziar de Gregorio-Monsalvo, ESO’s Representative in Chile, concludes: “We build the largest and most powerful telescopes, in the best place on Earth for astronomy, to enable astronomers worldwide to see what no one has ever seen before. Light pollution from projects like INNA doesn't just hinder research, it steals our shared view of the Universe.” A spokesperson for AES did not respond to a request for comment. The ESO is currently in conversation with the Chilean government about the effects of the INNA project.
Keywords: paranal, vlt, eso, feature, eso, astronomy, space, asteroid, photo, video, feature, science,
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