Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 7, 1994                   TAG: 9404070139
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ray Reed
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TEACHER CAN SERVE ON CITY COUNCIL

If it's legally permissible for Linda Wyatt to serve on City Council, could she vote on issues affecting the school system or would that be a conflict of interest? A.I.V.

A: This issue was pretty much settled when May Johnson, a teacher at Cave Spring High School, served on the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors from 1975 through 1983, including three terms as chairwoman.

For the first five years, Johnson abstained from voting on school issues. An attorney general's opinion cleared the way for teacher/supervisors around the state to vote on school matters, and Johnson wound up voting on School Board appointees a few times.

Now, there are teachers on the Richmond and Hampton city councils and Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors.

More recently, the attorney general has said teacher members of a governing body can vote on school budgets if they announce publicly that they are part of a group covered in the budget.

That vote is legal because at least two layers of management - superintendent and school board - stand between city councils and teachers.

A bill passed by this year's General Assembly prohibits teachers from serving on school boards. For city councils, though, teachers enjoy the same right to run as other citizens.

\ Big hunk of rock

Q: How big would a meteorite have to be to knock the Earth off its normal rotation and orbit? G.S., Roanoke

A: Nobody knows for sure because it's never happened - so far as astronomers can tell.

A guess, though: Maybe the size of the moon and too big to call a meteorite, said Brian Dennison, an astrophysicist at Virginia Tech.

A direct hit by a really big rock from outer space would hurt in other ways, though, stirring up so much dust that the atmosphere would be clouded for years. Plants wouldn't produce food for the survivors.

Scientists are pretty confident that a comet-like body 6 miles wide struck the Earth 65 million years ago and kicked up a cloud of dust that lasted for years, cooling and darkening the Earth and, coincidentally, wiping out the dinosaurs.

Scientists think such an event might happen once every 100 million years - rather infrequent, though nobody has a good fix on this stuff.

The most recent significant occurrence is called the Tungusta event, for a cometary ice ball that exploded in the air over Siberia on the morning of June 30, 1908. The blast scorched 500,000 acres of pine forest and turned trees into matchsticks. It was seen as far away as 466 miles, and people felt the blast 50 miles away.

Possibly the worst effect from this kind of event is dust and smoke from forest fires scattering sunlight back into space, cooling the Earth and disrupting food production.

People are looking at space for similar threatening objects. None has been sighted, Dennison said.

\ Got a question about something that might affect other people too? Something you've come across and wondered about? Give us a call at 981-3118. Maybe we can find the answer.