Free Republic

<p>Massive tsunamis, miles of raging forest fires, a stratosphere clogged with enough debris to obscure the sun -- even a relatively small asteroid striking Earth would wreak enough havoc to end civilization.</p> <p>"It's not whether it's going to happen," said Bruce Weaver, director of Monterey Institute for Research in Astronomy (MIRA). "The question is how long it will be (until one hits)."</p>

The headline read: "Massive tsunami sweeps Atlantic Coast in asteroid impact...." It was at that point that I wished that I had taken a speed-reading course, because the rest of the headline read: "...scenario for March 16, 2880." I'm really thankful for all those folks who spend countless hours each week with their eyeballs glued to the small end of a telescope as they search the skies, keeping constant vigil for anything heading toward Earth that's larger than a frozen turkey. The men and women of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab, college professors and their student assistants and even...

It's the stuff of science fiction movies. Bruce Willis, by a mighty effort, saving the world from extinction by a huge meteor. But Bruce Willis won't do it, and in our current state of readiness, neither will anyone else (sic!). That is why LSU geophysicist Brooks Ellwood is plumbing the geologic record, trying to correlate known mass extinctions to meteor strikes. "When we think about the human race and life in general, what do we worry about? We worry about nuclear holocaust and major glaciation. Then we worry about the giant chunks of rock that fly past Earth all the...

Rock from space might have hit life hard 380 million years ago. 13 June 2003 JOHN WHITFIELD About 380 million years ago, a rock from space smashed into the Earth, say geologists. They believe that the impact wiped out a large fraction of life. The idea could strengthen the controversial connection between mass extinctions and impacts. Up to now, the only candidate for a link is the meteor 65 million years ago that some believe helped exterminate the dinosaurs. Signs of an earlier catastrophe coincide with a disappearance of many animals, says Brooks Ellwood of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge:...

NEW STUDY: SOME ASTEROIDS MAY BE LAYERED LIKE ONIONS A new study of several meteorites collected on Earth and thought to have come from the same large asteroid reveal the structure of the parent space rock to have been something like an onion, with layer upon layer of differing structure. The asteroid, long ago destroyed in a collision, was once hot enough to have a molten core and cooled from the outside inward, the research shows, confirming a long-held expectation that had eluded supporting research. Asteroids are leftovers of planet formation. While some rocks got together to build planets about...