Information circulated on the cambridge-conference network is for scholarly use only. The attached text may not be reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Questions and answers never make contact with each other - or with reality. What everyone wants to know is what nobody seems to ask.
Ministers pontificate in response to inquiries nobody has put.
On Monday ministers had advised, in a written answer, that the giant asteroid that dominated the news a week ago was not, repeat NOT, going to hit the Earth. We have this on new Labour's authority. Jonathan Tate, director of Spaceguard UK, was so kind to forward Mr Opik's questions and John Battle's rather trivial answers. The asteroid 1997 XF11, which was discovered last year, has an orbit around the Sun which crosses the Earth's orbit. It will pass by the Earth in 2028.