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Earth was born as a result of repeated asteroid collisions, the moon was created by a single giant impact event. Then, Earth's size attracted huge meteorites, which slammed into it, causing super-high-temperature rock vapour to cover the entire surface and evaporate all ocean water. The earliest life-forms survived such infernal events by escaping deep into the ground, miraculously emerging again and again. The Earth has gone through innumerable catastrophic events, and life has survived by acquiring new abilities to live through each crisis. Humans are part of the grand history of life's evolution, which has been closely intertwined with repeated...

Forget the arrogance and corruption -- $153 million in Clinton family speaking fees from 2001, mainly bribes during her State Department years. Forget the lies, the lies about lies, and the perjury. Forget the security breaches. Forget enabling America’s most prominent sexual predator. Forget the trail of bodies stretching from Little Rock to Benghazi. Forget every scandal from Whitewater to deleted e-mails. Forget all of it. Instead, focus on coming attractions -- what a Clinton presidency would mean for America. It would be the political equivalent of an extinction level event. Obama began the process of transforming America. Hillary will...

This month, a drilling platform will rise in the Gulf of Mexico, but it won’t be aiming for oil. Scientists will try to sink a diamond-tipped bit into the heart of Chicxulub crater—the buried remnant of the asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs, along with most other life on the planet. They hope that the retrieved rock cores will contain clues to how life came back in the wake of the cataclysm, and whether the crater itself could have been a home for novel microbial life. And by drilling into a circular ridge inside the...

Scientists Have Underestimated The Likelihood Of City-Killing Asteroids Hitting Earth Reuters Irene Klotz, Reuters Apr. 28, 2014, 2:59 PM The chance of a city-killing asteroid striking Earth is higher than scientists previously believed, a non-profit group building an asteroid-hunting telescope said on Tuesday. A global network that listens for nuclear weapons detonations detected 26 asteroids that exploded in Earth's atmosphere from 2000 to 2013, data collected by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization shows. The explosions include the Feb. 15, 2013, impact over Chelyabinsk, Russia, which left more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris. "There is...

60 Minutes news program ran a segment entitled "Dangerous game of 'cosmic roulette'?" This segment highlighted the NASA program aimed at finding and tracking asteroids whose orbits cross Earth's thus placing them on a collision course with us. The NASA administrators at first bragged about how they knew with confidence about 95% of all the "major" threats to our planet and were currently tracking these threats. These administrators were clearly trying to convey to the public an attitude of "don't worry, we have it all under control." Yet as with most statements by government bureaucrats the devil is in the...

Central Mexico’s Lake Cuitzeo contains melted rock formations and nanodiamonds that suggest a comet impacted Earth around 12,900 years ago, scientists say. CREDIT: Israde et al. (2012) New evidence supports the idea that a huge space rock collided with our planet about 13,000 years ago and broke up in Earth's atmosphere, a new study suggests. This impact would have been powerful enough to melt the ground, and could have killed off many large mammals and humans. It may even have set off a period of unusual cold called the Younger Dryas that began at that time, researchers say. The...

As Cities Go From Two Papers to One, Talk of Zero By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA The history of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stretches back more than two decades before Washington became a state, but after 146 years of publishing, the paper is expected to print its last issue next week, perhaps surviving only in a much smaller online version. And it is not alone. The Rocky Mountain News shut down two weeks ago, and The Tucson Citizen is expected to fold next week. At least Denver, Seattle and Tucson still have daily papers. But now, some economists and newspaper executives say it...

SUPERVOLCANOES WARNING Slumbering supervolcanoes powerful enough to wipe out much of the planet may awaken much sooner than it had previously been thought. Experts believed it would take hundreds of thousands of years for reservoirs of molton rock, or magma, beneath a supervolcano to build for an eruption. But a new study indicates the time between super-eruptions can actually be tens of thousands of years - and many are already long overdue. A blast from a supervolcano would be strong enough cause mass extinction and change the world's climate. The findings, published in the Journal of Petrology, are bad...

Sweeping Civilization Away In A Single Wave Santa Cruz - May 28, 2003 If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet's surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States. The researchers...

NASA Should Lead More Focused Program to Reduce Threat from Hazardous Asteroids National Optical Astronomy Observatory NASA should be assigned to lead a new research program to better determine the population and physical diversity of near-Earth objects that may collide with our planet, down to a size of 200 meters, according to the final report of a workshop on the scientific requirements for the mitigation of hazardous comets and asteroids. The workshop’s report also recommends that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) work to more rapidly communicate surveillance data on natural airbursts of smaller rocky bodies, and it concludes...