London - A British member of parliament yesterday launched a campaign for the global monitoring of massive asteroids which could kill billions of people if they crashed into the Earth.
"At present an asteroid could hit the Earth and we would have about 20 seconds' notice," Mr Lembit Opik told a news conference. "It isn't long enough to say the Lord's Prayer." Mr Opik is a member of the Liberal Democrats, whose Lithuanian grandfather, an astronomer, had an asteroid named after him.