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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:15:23
Brown, R Ken (brownrk1@texaco.com)
Fri, 30 Oct 1998 05:27:12 -0600
> What is the probability that a comet or asteroid similar in size
> to that which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs will hit in
> the next few months?
If the end-Cretaceous event was caused by an asteroid [still far from
sure] it was probably the biggest or 2nd biggest since the origin of
multicellular animal life (The end-Permian event was a far bigger
extinction, but almost certainly not caused by asteroids, and there
may have been 1, 2 or more similarly large extinctions in the previous
500 million years which may have been caused by asteroids).
So there have been 1-5 impacts of similar size in 500-1000 million
years. Taking a "few months" as 2-9, we have a chance of between 1 in
150 million and 1 in 6000 million.
If the poster didn't really mean "similar in size to that which caused
the extinction of the dinosaurs" but "big enough to End Civilisation As
We Know It" then, depending on how drastically you want civiliasation to
end we have anything from one every 5 or 10,000 years (serious global
cooling + tsunamis if it hits the sea) to one every 30 million years
(mass extinctions, boiling seas, the whole apocalyptic deal). Both
figures are complete speculation of course, and nobody mention
Velikovsky please :-)
So, depending on your assumptions, the chance that your summer holiday
plans for 1999 will be disrupted by an asteroid are somewhere between -
at extreme limits - 1 in 5,000 and 1 in 50 million.
The centre of that range is significantly worse than the chance of
having your holiday being ruined by a plane crash. In fact in most
countries (though not, for reasons we won't go into here, in any part of
the Americas) the worst guess probabilities are significantly worse
than your chance of being raped or murdered. So a rational holidaymaker
would spend more on the space program than on personal security.
I already forgot what this has to do with code....
Ken Brown
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:15:23