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It's happened before. It will happen again. But with this one, I like our odds. At least they are tracking it, and we have till 2014, which gives us both time and opportunity to do something about it.
Unless we decide to nuke each other into oblivion, and the odds are getting worse in our favor on that every day....
Posts: 1843 | Registered: Aug 2003
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That gives me about a decade to either finish this degree and apply for astronaut training or drop out and start working on an oil digging crew. Either way, have no fear!
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Ah, that one is nothing. You should be worried about the one that is coming 3/06/2880 known as 1950 DA.
Seriously, the last time there was an extinction level asteroid? 65 million years ago. I think we'll make if. Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I'd better make the best of my eleven and a half years left on this earth then.
Now's a good time to start building that bunker in Greenland.
The probability that it will collide with the earth is so small. I'm so much more likely to die in a car crash or even a plane crash that get hit by an asteroid.
Also, I think if the asteroid is going to hit the earth we should give it a better name.
Interesting and diverting, but I'm not at all worried.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Slaine is right, it has happened before and will happen again, unless our technology stops it. And Teshi is right, the probability of this one killing you is slim compared to car accidents or cardiovascular disease (one of these will probably do me in.)
Also, it seems small enough that it wouldn't trigger a nuclear winter scenario and massive die-off. My guess would be if it hit, it would a kill only 20% (only 1 billion) of humans. Only, hah. So that's about 1:5 million odds from this one rock. There have been odds calculated for an extinction-level event from any random asteroid or comet happening, if I can find that I'll post it.
A comet could be worse, because we would likely have less chance to find it before it came too close to do anything to deflect it. The further an object is from collision the less force is neccesary to deflect it.
For a great apocalyptic (you know you're a cynic when you can spell apocalyptic) novel with a comet hitting the Earth, read Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle, one of my favorite novels from high school.
[edit to add links: U. of Colorado astronomy siteThis site claims a 1km asteroid could set off mass extinctions. Also has a cool galactic plane oscillation theory for mass extinctions I've never seen before. wikipedia's def. of mass extinction Holocene extinctionsThis wikipedia entry claims humans in the past 10,000 years have wiped out more species than an asteroid!
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I thought This was actually the scariest thing I've heard in a while, asteroids not withstanding.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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