With 2012 coming up, watch a movie about the true facts around asteroids that threaten Earth

2012 it's almost here and speculations regarding the end of the world reach high levels of intensity. Presented with otherwise common sense and annually repeated astronomical data and phenomena, people see them as an exception capable of destroying us, helped of course by the very concerned media.

Sometimes I wonder who came first? The whole craziness around ancient predictictions regarding 2012 that led to the screening of "2012" the movie? Or the movie and the whole panic is just a malefic, but genious PR campaing to increase box office? Talking about the movie, I went to see it and left with one strong impression: the special effects were so impresive that made you think this could be real. The actors play however reminded you that it was just a fictional movie.

Leaving behind all speculations, The Space Generation Advisory Congress (SGAC) released a movie about the true facts around asteroids that threaten Earth. The volunteer made documentary presents the opinions of international experts on issues surrounding defending Earth from asteroid and comet impacts. More about the team behind it on the SGAC website.

You can watch the movie here. It is made of four sections, each focusing on one important aspect regarding asteroid impact: definition and understanding, deflection methods, public awareness and asteroid exploitation.

First conceived at the 2008 Space Generation Congress, the documentary uses footage from interviews made in April at the 2009 Planetary Defense Conference in Grenada, Spain. At the same time, the film promotes the first “Youth of Defense Conference” which will be held in Romania, in 2011, prior to the second "Planetary Defence Conferece" to be held in Bucharest.

In 2011, Romania will not be at its first flirt with such topics as asteroids. Last year, we saw the first Romanians to discover asteroids in a fantastic project called EURONEAR, coordonated by Dr. Ovidiu Vaduvescu. The team gathered Romanian professional and amateur astronomers, setting an example of how prolific the colaboration between the two types of astronomers can be.

If you are an amateur astronomer living in Romania and passionated by such topics you can join the EURONEAR team and be sure not to miss the 2011 SGAC conferences! Keep in touch via email for more detalis.

And for all those who can read Romanian, an interesting article about the maya calendar with regards to astronomy as well.