Nexus - 0228 - New Times Magazine-pages

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LY D © oF VE\N> COMET HALE-BOPP, FOR THE NON-ASTRONOMER AUSTRALIAN ASSETS GO UNDER THE HAMMER In the past six weeks, AUD$10.4 billion of Australian Nes assets have been quietly handed over to foreign interests, with hardly a mention in the media! The sell-off includes: * 25% of Qantas to British Airways, plus another 27% to for- eign investors in a recent AUD$1.45 billion float; + Pacific Dunlop's food operations to the Swiss and the US for AUD$1.06 billion; * one of Victoria's major electricity distribution corpora- tions for AUD$1.85 billion; + Australia's second largest life insurance company, National Mutual, to French group AXA for AUD$1.6 billion; * building and plastics company BTR Nylex to the British for a record $4.5 billion; * plus a bundle of commercial and residential prop- erties. The Australian Bureau of Statistics refuses to publish the official measure of the level of foreign investment across the different industry sectors, but Australian Consumers Association research shows the following: Food, 85% foreign-owned; Beer, 50%; Car Manufacturing, 98%; Engineering and Construction, 67%; Advertising, 80%; Hotels, 90%; Print Media, 60%. The purchase of Australian assets by for- eigners includes every asset the companies have under their corporate banner. To give just one example, with the sale oO The Hale-Bopp comet (C/1995 01) was discovered on 23rd July 1995 by Alan Hale, New Mexico, and Thomas Bopp, Arizona. The orbit of this comet is of a long period—approximately 3,250 years. It has travelled through the inner solar system before—that is, it is not a new comet from the Oort Cloud. Its orbit is a very long, stretched-out ellipse, and thie comet is part of our solar system in orbit around our Sun. Comet Hale-Bopp is expected to reach its closest point to the Sun (perihelion) at 15.4 hours UTC on Ist April 1997 (no fooling!). At that time it will be about 0.913 astronomical units from the Sun (one AU = about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers—the distance between the Sun and the Earth), or roughly 85 mil- lion miles (137 million kilometers) from the Sun. This is not a particularly close approach to the Sun, but any comet that comes within | AU of the Sun has a chance of putting on a nice show. The comet will make its closest approach to the Earth on 23rd March 1997. At that time it will be more than 120 million miles (194 million kilometers) from Earth—not even a very close approach! Will the comet ‘cross' the Earth's orbit? Well, yes and no... The comet will come closer to the Sun than the Earth, but it will never actually physically cross any point in space that is occupied by the Earth—so it can't hit the Earth! of National Mutual, French company AXA gained control of Australia's largest sheep- farming operations—National Mutual being considered the country's biggest wool producer, as well as having enormous cot- ton, crop and beef interests. This means that Australian wool-growing is now, in effect, in the hands of the Champs Elysées farmers. It may come as a surprise to most to learn that the Australian Bureau of Statistics places the USA as the biggest for- eign investor at AUD$85.2 billion, fol- lowed by the UK at AUD$74.5 billion, Japan at AUD$48.9 billion and Hong Kong at AUD$ 14.4 billion. (Source: The Sun-Herald, 3 September 1995) a ket Biel abs Eratleli aie Tm cited 08 ig ip The comet will be best seen from the southern hemisphere (and lower northern latitudes) except when it is expected to be at its brightest. In March and April 1997 it will only be easily visible from the north- ern hemisphere. There have been reports that this comet is very large. Actually, the heart of the comet—the nucleus—is obscured by the dust and gas that forms the head of the comet. Nobody knows how large the nucleus is. We can't see it! The nuclei of comets range in size from a few miles (kilometers) or smaller, to over 100 miles (160 kilometers) in diameter. The bright- ness of the comet is not always directly related to the size of the nucleus. This is because, typically, only a fraction of the surface of a comet's nucleus is active. It is 6 © NEXUS OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 1995