Wednesday, December 30, 2009 MOSCOW: Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia's space agency said Wednesday. "We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio. "We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station. "Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed," he said. The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and a local news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert...
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