Vorl Bek <vorl....@antichef.com> wrote:
> It looks to me like the chance of earth being hit by a rock that > does real damage is minuscule. > As I mentioned, that idea has been brought into question because the number of serious asteroid strikes on earth is now thought to be much higher than people used to think. I mentioned the ocean. In previous estimates of the historical record of earth impacts, people did not take into account of the fact that 70% of them hit the oceans instead of the land. When they started looking in the oceans they found many previously unaccounted-for craters, and based on this, they estimated that meteor strikes occur more often than previously realized. They determined that the most recent catastrophic strike was in the year 536 AD, in the ocean north of Australia. This caused global-wide disruption. See this 2008 article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/06/the-sky-is-falling/306807/?single_page=true - Jed
