Florida Tech Lecture Looks at the Impact of Asteroids

– Florida Tech’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Public Lecture Series will present, “In the Shadow of Asteroids: Impacts from Space,” on Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. The
presentation, free to the community, will be in the F.W. Olin Engineering Complex auditorium, Room EC118.

The lecturer is Dr. Terry Oswalt, Florida Tech Vice Provost for Research and Professor of Physics & Space
Sciences. Weather permitting, there will be stargazing afterward on the rooftop observing deck of the Olin Physical Sciences Building.

Asteroids and comets may preserve the only records of the physical and chemical processes which marked the beginning of the solar system 4.6 billion years
ago. Over the last decade, the risk of impacts from comets and asteroids has been recognized as substantial and several research programs have been
undertaken to find and categorize the most dangerous Near Earth Objects (NEOs).

Dr. Oswalt will discuss how NEOs are found, the way impact risks are assessed, what the effects of an impact can be, and how the human species might
respond to the threat of a major impact.

The F.W. Olin Engineering Center is located on University Blvd. For more information, call (321) 674-7207, or visit www.fit.edu/aapls.