There's a slight chance that
an asteroid could impact Mars at the end of this month. Usually, collisions between heavenly bodies have vanishingly small odds (a million to one, say), but the chances on this one have been steadily improving, from 350-to-1 to 75-to-1 to
25-to-1 (link to Washington Post). Scientists say that this could be comprable to the famous
Tunguska blast in Siberia a hundred years ago (not to be confused with
this other Tunguska blast).
[more inside]
posted by math
on Jan 7, 2008 -
37 comments
NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory
recently detected [reg required] the largest explosion ever detected in the universe: an eruption releasing the energy of hundreds of millions of
gamma ray bursts. Just to put it in perspective, a single
GRB releases enough radiation to
wipe out just about everything human beings would require for survival in a 1000 light year radius. (The Milky Way spans ~100,000 light years, while the
United Federation of Planets spans about 8,000). Arthur C. Clarke has gone so far as suggesting that GRBs might be one of the reasons for Extra-Terrestrial silence:
Gamma Ray Bursts are so large and inescapable, a single one would wipe out even an enormous galactic empire. Makes
killer asteroids seem downright
quaint.
posted by absalom
on Jan 8, 2005 -
24 comments
Let us prepare for impact. A group of scientists is working on a standardized protocol for dealing with the possibility of a comet or massive asteroid striking the Earth, saying humans can do more than the dinosaurs ever could before a colossal impact precipitated their extinction 65 millions years ago.
"We have now overcome the giggle factor."
I don't know if we have........
posted by nonharmful
on May 7, 2001 -
24 comments
