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Science

Antarctic Craters Reveal Asteroid Strike 234

Posted by michael from the rock-of-ages dept.
dhuff writes "Scientists using satellites have mapped huge craters under the Antarctic ice sheet caused by an asteroid as big as the one believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago."
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Antarctic Craters Reveal Asteroid Strike More

Antarctic Craters Reveal Asteroid Strike

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  • Maybe....but I'm not buying it (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:44PM (#10033429)
    It could have been an explosion from several adolescent Predators when being overtaken by thousands of Aliens?
    • Maybe....but I'm not buying it. It could have been an explosion from several adolescent Predators when being overtaken by thousands of Aliens?

      When reading the article, I KNEW that reference would come up multiple times. I was dreading it. I was seriously considering skipping the coments altogether. Well, good sir, imagine my surprise when I saw that A - the expected comment made first post and B - it was actually phrased in a very funny manner.

      I tip my hat to you, sir.
    • From the article:

      The Antarctica strike occurred during an ice age, so even tidal waves would have been weakened to mere ripples by the calming effect of icebergs on the ocean.

      My understanding is that tidal waves are seismic events that travel along the seafloor. They raise the water level only a few feet, and are essentially invisible until they hit shore and start climbing. Since icebergs float, it's not clear how they would suppress a shockwave happening below and around them.

      Prof Van der Hoeven sa

      • Re:Maybe....but I'm not buying it (Score:4, Informative)

        by hazem ( 472289 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @12:16AM (#10035869) Journal
        My understanding is that tidal waves are seismic events that travel along the seafloor. They raise the water level only a few feet, and are essentially invisible until they hit shore and start climbing. Since icebergs float, it's not clear how they would suppress a shockwave happening below and around them.

        I'm not a specialist in this in any way at all. But maybe this is a good analogy:

        Smooth out 2 big comforters on your bed. Kneel on the side of the bed, and sweep your arm under the comforters from one end to the other. It's fairly easy because you only have to displace the comforters right around your arm.

        Now put a piece of cardboard as big as your bed between the two comforters. This simulates iceburgs. Now slide your arm through. It will be harder because your arm has to displace a larger amount of comforter as it moves along - the cardboard kind of spreads out the force/displacement that your arm is causing.

        That's the only thing I can think of.

  • Curious (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ValiantSoul ( 801152 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:44PM (#10033431)
    "One thing that did happen at exactly the same time was the reversing of the Earth's magnetic field." Darn so the water hasn't always drained the same direction? Does the magnetic field being reversed actually affect anything important?

    • Re:Curious (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:48PM (#10033448)
      Well....

      The compass industry will go South ;)

    • Re:Curious (Score:3, Insightful)

      by erick99 ( 743982 )
      From GPSWorld.com

      Most electronic compasses are based on sensors that are magnetometers. A magnetometer is a device for measuring the intensity of one or more components of the Earth's magnetic field.

      I would think that a great deal of electronic devices would have a problem if the earths magnetic field suddenly "flipped."

      Cheers,

      Erick

    • Re:Curious (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:03PM (#10033533) Homepage
      "Does the magnetic field being reversed actually affect anything important?"

      It doesn't matter what direction the field points, what matters is that there is a magnetic field around the Earth. During the time it takes for the field to flip, the field becomes very weak. That causes two problems. Some animals use the magnetic field for navigation. More importantly, the field is a shield protecting us from cosmic high energy particles. According to a story in the NY Times (covered on /.), Earth's magnetic field has weakened 10-15% since we started measuring 150 years ago. Maybe our grandkids will have to wear lead undies.

      -B

      • Re:Curious (Score:3, Informative)

        by jdhutchins ( 559010 )
        If we lose our magnetic field, and start having much more solar wind hit the earth, the concern isn't so much for cancer as it is for our electronics. Solar storms will have a much bigger effect on our electrical system (electronics and primarly power distribution). The solar wind, during slight solar storms, could knock out our power, etc if we don't do something to shield it.

      • Re:Curious (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AstrumPreliator ( 708436 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:19PM (#10033586)
        According to a story in the NY Times (covered on /.), Earth's magnetic field has weakened 10-15% since we started measuring 150 years ago. Maybe our grandkids will have to wear lead undies.

        Then again it might just be an insignificant fluctuation that happens every billion years or so. We have 150 years worth of data, the Earth is billions of years old, I don't think we're qualified to make assumptions.

        • Re:Curious (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @04:25PM (#10033951) Homepage
          Or course we don't have enough data. That's why I made a joke about lead undies and didn't declare the world was ending. The little data we have indicates that the decrease in field strength is accelerating. 10% is a significant drop. This is something we need to keep an eye on and take seriously.

          -B

        • Re:Curious (Score:5, Interesting)

          by oquigley ( 572410 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @05:54PM (#10034375)
          The Earths Magnetic field keeps all kind of nasty radiation from hitting the surface.
          So it's always been a bit of a puzzle why there's no correllation between magnetic reversals (where the magnetic field weakens, fades, then reappears with swapped poles) and mass extinctions.
          After all, one would think that floods of radiation washing across the Earths surface would be unhealthy, no?

          But now it appears that when the magnetic field weakens, the solar wind induces a magnetic field in the ionosphere that's pretty much as effective at stopping high energy particles and cosmic rays as is the original field.

          Here's an article about it in New Scientist from a few months ago.
          New Scientist [newscientist.com]


        • My preacher told me the earth was only 5,000 years old!

          But on a serious note, whether or not this is an ordinary fluctuation is irrelevant in practical terms. If the magnetic field weakens enough to wreak havoc on our expectations (and that could affect much more than just compasses, of course), we should be paying attention to it, whether or not it is "insignificant" in terms of the larger time frame of the universe. Human beings ourselves are likely insignificant in terms of the history of the universe.

        • not true. we have thousands of years of data preserved in pottery, which aligns its metals when heated in kilns..we use that data to make a map of the field. We also have millions of years of data collected from hardened lava flow in hawaii.. so we have plenty of data.

          pm
        • We have 150 years worth of data, the Earth is billions of years old, I don't think we're qualified to make assumptions.

          And, what "qualifications" should be met before we can make these assumptions?

          Specifically, why should we disregard a minimual data set when it's all we have to make any kind of decision on?

          Which is better - Minimal data which indicates distinct possibilities and problems to plan against, or - Ignore anything but bullet-proof data and act blindly?

          Put another way, let's assume that you

          • Re:Curious (Score:2, Insightful)

            by AstrumPreliator ( 708436 )
            Say I give you a dot on a piece of graph paper. I tell you that this dot lies on a curve represented by the equation f(x)=y. Now accurately predict the path of this function. Do you have enough information to do anything? I don't think so.

            For all we know our magnetic feild could have been at it's strongest ever 150 years ago and now it's leveling off to normal levels. Or perhaps it's dipping right before a major surge in magnetism. Maybe it's plumeting like a stone. The fact of the matter is we don't know

            • Re:Curious (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Phragmen-Lindelof ( 246056 )
              It is too bad you know very little about science and the way it works. There is much more than 150 years of data available. Scientists really dislike being wrong and will usually wait until they have a "strong case" before making public claims or submitting papers to journals (the "cold fusion" mess proves how dumb carelessness (or stupidity) can be). The fact that you are modded "Insightful" (at least at this moment) indicates that you are not the only person who does not "get it."

        • Re:Curious (Score:3, Informative)

          by Gooba42 ( 603597 )
          There is of course that nasty geological record at the Atlantic rift showing a periodic reversal of the magnetic alignment in newly formed rock going back millions and millions of years.

          That of course doesn't count because humans didn't record it, right?
      • Some animals use the magnetic field for navigation.

        I was listening to a "Living on Earth" episode recently where some scientists were studying a certain migratory bird (can't recall which (maybe terns?). Apparently this bird calibrates what it senses as the magnetic field with where the sun sets each night.

        For the experiment, the birds were kept exposed at sunset to a magnetic field that was 90 degree off what it's supposed to be. When they let the birds out after dark, they flew the wrong direction by
    • "One thing that did happen at exactly the same time was the reversing of the Earth's magnetic field." Darn so the water hasn't always drained the same direction?

      Magnetism has nothing to do with the direction in which water flows in a drain. That would be the rotation of the planet.

      Does the magnetic field being reversed actually affect anything important?

      Yes.
      Things like radiation reaching the planet's surface, stuff like that.

      • Re:Parent is ignorant or trolling? Hard to tell. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:24PM (#10033609)

        Magnetism has nothing to do with the direction in which water flows in a drain. That would be the rotation of the planet.

        And for all reasonable-sized drains (such as the ones you have at the bottom of your bathtub), the Earth's rotation has a completely-negligible effect on the outflow. The notion that the Coriolis force causes water to drain in opposite directions, in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, is a fallacy.

        To see why this is so, consider the so-called Rossby radius of deformation [tamu.edu], defined as the ratio between wave speed and rotation frequency. This quantity is the length scale at which the Coriolis force begins to have an appreciable effect on disturbances in a fluid in a rotating system. Plugging in the appropriate values for water waves in a bathtub on the rotating Earth, you find a Rossby radius of around 20km. This is four orders of magnitude larger than the scale of the bathtub, indicating that the influence of the Coriolis force on draining water will be almost non-existant.

        • Can you then explain what actually causes the rotational effect then?
        • The Earth's rotation has a completely-negligible effect on the outflow.

          I take it you don't watch The Simpsons...

          Bart: "Do the toilets go backwards in here?"
          U.S Embasy guy: "No. To combat home sickness, we've installed a device that makes them swirl the correct American way."
          *Flushes toilet. Machine kicks in and water swirls the other way*
          Homer (weeping, singing): "Sweet land of liberty..."
        • Hmm, you have never seen a Coriolis Clock have you?

          For those who don't know, it is a clock with a horizontally rotating flywheel, that you never need to wind. It works provided that you are within a certain lattitude - too close to the equator/poles and it won't work. Very delicate 19th century design - the ones you get in the shops today are immitations and are battery powered.

          So the Coriolis force can have an effect on very small objects just a few inches in diameter - enough to power a clock by steali

          • So the Coriolis force can have an effect on very small objects just a few inches in diameter - enough to power a clock by stealing energy from the earth's rotation.

            I'd never heard of this -- sounds interesting! But my original remarks were made in reference to disturbances of a fluid in a rotating system, such as water draining from a bathtub on the Earth's surface. A flywheel is a totally different kettle of fish.

        • The notion that the Coriolis force causes water to drain in opposite directions, in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, is a fallacy.

          Dear god, if something is repeated enough...
          Well, I'm off to filling my tub and experimenting for myself, thanks.

    • Re:Curious (Score:3, Funny)

      by johannesg ( 664142 )
      Other people have already mentioned some of the problems we might expect, but think of the upside: all the pigeons will go and shit on things on the southern hemisphere!

    • Re:Curious (Score:2, Informative)

      by Pinkfud ( 781828 )
      I call bulls**t on that. As a Geologist, I can speak with some authority on the subject of magnetic field reversals. There have been hundreds of reversals in the earth's history, and the one that happens to correlate with the impact is merely one in a long series. We don't know why the field reverses, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with external events.

      We also don't know how long the reversals take to complete, and that's the worrisome aspect. If it happens fairly quickly, there wouldn't be

    • A magnetic flipperoo will probably confuse migratory birds and homing pidgeons.

  • What are the odds? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by erick99 ( 743982 )
    I doubt that we could get away with this again:

    Prof Van der Hoeven said: "The extraordinary thing about this meteor strike is that it appeared to do so little damage. Unlike the dinosaur strike there is no telltale layer of dust that demonstrates the history of the event. It may have damaged things and wiped out species but there is no sign of it."

    Cheers,

    Erick

    • Unlike the dinosaur strike there is no telltale layer of dust that demonstrates the history of the event.

      Yeah, what do you expect when you vaporize hundreds of cubic miles of ice? a few extra inches of rainfall... At best, it might show up in the sand layers of any deserts that existed back then. For the most part, however, I'd expect the evidence to be washed away by itself.

  • No damage? (Score:2, Informative)

    by tasidar ( 604319 )
    Prof Van der Hoeven said: "The extraordinary thing about this meteor strike is that it appeared to do so little damage. Unlike the dinosaur strike there is no telltale layer of dust that demonstrates the history of the event. It may have damaged things and wiped out species but there is no sign of it."

    One thing that did happen at exactly the same time was the reversing of the Earth's magnetic field. There is no other explanation as to why this took place and Prof Van der Hoeven believes it was caused by

  • Well now... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by reezle ( 239894 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:49PM (#10033450) Homepage
    I'd like to think we could do something about this problem, but I wonder if any technology we have could alter the course of an asteroid large enough to be a problem. Do we even have a prototype of something like a fusion rocket that could potentialy move the hundreds (thousands/millions) of tons of mass that these big rocks have?

    Have the nuk-lear worryworts made sure that we haven't even researched the possibilities? Best I've ever seen is the occasional schematic of an orion-type starship from decades ago. Screw Ion-Drives. Let's give some money to the big engines...

    • Re:Well now... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dyfet ( 154716 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:00PM (#10033513) Homepage
      I believe this very question was seriously studied back in the late 60's and early 70's in project Icarus. I think their conclusion at the time was that the best option was to load up a Saturn V with as many nukes as possible, aim carefully, and just hope for the best...

      • Re:Well now... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by e9th ( 652576 )
        I've wondered about that. If you're going to explode a bunch of nukes right next to each other, how precisely must the explosions be synchronized? If one bomb goes off a millisecond early, won't it just ruin all the rest?

        • Re:Well now... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by lommer ( 566164 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:52PM (#10033778)
          Yes, they do have to be timed perfectly. However, in the nuclear explosion world, perfect timing is what it's all about. One of the primary difficulties in constructing a nuclear warhead is timing all the conventional explosives that compound the critical mass of plutonium (or uranium) to produce the nuclear explosion. The science is so precise that they have to account for the time delay it takes the electricity to travel down wires that are only meters long, let alone the rates at which the shockwave propagates through the conventional explosive - all of which must be correct to within thousandths of a second. Add another layer of complexity for hydrogen bombs.

          So yes, they would have to time them perfectly, but that wouldn't be too difficult as it's a problem they've already figure out how to solve when constructing the devices in the first place.
          • The science is so precise that they have to account for the time delay it takes the electricity to travel down wires that are only meters long

            So, you are saying that nuclear weapon design is almost as complicated as dual-CPU motherboard design?
          • Things need to be that precise only if you want to make a small bomb. You can make a big one from a 2nd hand gun barrel and just fire one chunk of enriched uranium into another. You can do the same with slightly more complication by firing a chunk of plutonium into another with a piece of americanium sandwiched in the middle. The result is a large, unwieldy, very reliable and powerful bomb. These are the kind of things that we are worried third rate nations will cobble together from junk parts.

        • Re:Well now... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by jadavis ( 473492 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:53PM (#10033791)
          Yup. Even an individual nuke requires very precise timing so that it implodes evenly. If not, it will start to break apart and never achieve the pressure required to detonate. Even when a nuke does detonate it only gets a moderate yield (I think "fat man" was about 15% yield) because it breaks itself apart so fast.
        • Assuming the wavefront from the 1st explosion is traveling trivialy slower than the speed of light (in a vacuum):

          ([Distance between warheads] / c ) = [precision required]

          0.05 km / 299,792.458(km/s) = 1.6678204759907602478778835723746e-7 s

          Someone please check my math. Its sometimes as bad as my grammer.

  • No layer of dust? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rde ( 17364 ) * on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:50PM (#10033456)
    Quoth the good professor:
    The extraordinary thing about this meteor strike is that it appeared to do so little damage. Unlike the dinosaur strike there is no telltale layer of dust that demonstrates the history of the event.

    It ploughs through millions of tonnes of ice and snow, then leaves no layer of dust... d'you think it might have, I dunno, melted or something?

    More information at The Scotsman [scotsman.com], btw.

  • Stay away... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SteamyMobile ( 783822 ) <support@steamymobile.com> on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:50PM (#10033461) Homepage
    If they find pyramids under there, stay away from them.

  • Hail (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tesko ( 719892 )
    I for one welcome our new asteroid overlords
    Hah! Take that Karma!

  • Interception (Score:5, Insightful)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:57PM (#10033492)
    Perhaps this really is the time for NASA, the ESA, and Russia to pool their efforts to find a way of detecting, intercepting and deflecting comets and wandering asteroids that present a threat. The European Quijote Project seems to be a step in the right direction(as well as having a very witty title).

    Obviously, statistically the chance of an individual being killed by a major meteor strike is fairly low, perhaps lower than that of being killed in a terrorist attack and much lower than that of being killed on the roads. But it's the meteor strike that has the potential to kill perhaps 99% of the human race, and this latest evidence seems to suggest that the frequency of such impacts is higher than expected.

    • Re:Interception (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stevesliva ( 648202 )
      The European Quijote Project seems to be a step in the right direction(as well as having a very witty title).
      Or they could just be giving ammo to those who say they're tilting at windmills.

    • Re:Interception (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kamerynn ( 726494 )
      Statistically speaking, death rate by asteroids is non negligible and much higher than by terrorist attacks. The earth gets hit by an asteroid big enough to cause a global catastrophy once every 500,000 years, so the odds of that happening in any given year are 1 in 500,000. Assuming such an impact kills 25% of the Earth's population, that makes the risk from an impact 1 in 4. The odds of any individual dying from an asteroid strike in any given year are 1 in 500,000 multiplied by 4, or 1 in 2 million
      • The individual odds of any one person being killed by an asteroid impact are very low. The disturbing thing is that the odds of millions of people being killed are not all that much lower. It puts it in a very different category than individual risks.

  • impact reversing magnetic field? doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lobachevsky ( 465666 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @02:57PM (#10033496)
    I don't dispute Hans' rigor in studying the issue, but how can the correlation of the impact and the magnetic field reversing lead to the conclusion the impact caused the reversal?

    And why even compare this 780K yr old impact to what might've done the dinosaurs in 65m yrs ago? It just would confuse people with poor reading skills (*cough* slashdot readers) and lead them to associate this 780K yr old impact with the extinction of the dinasaurs.

    Also, the article attemps to explain why the 65m yr old impact would've caused climactic change whereas the 780k yr old impact would not -- I didn't quite understand their argument of why the older impact caused dust clouds leading to extinction while the newer impact did not -- was it because of the composition of ice vs rock?
    • was it because of the composition of ice vs rock?

      I wouldn't think so. Antarctica is actually a continent so there should have been dust. Although it makes sense that the dust may have settled differently because of the climate.
    • Homer: Ahh, not a bear in sight. The bear patrol must be working like a charm. Lisa: That's spacious reasoning dad. Homer: Thank you honey. Lisa: By you're logic, i can claim that this rock keeps tigers away. Homer: Hmm..how does it work? Lisa: It doesn't work. Homer: Uh huh. Lisa: Its just a stupid rock! Homer: Uh huh. Lisa: But you don't see any tigers around here, do you? Homer: (looks around, thinks) Lisa, I wanna buy your rock.
  • It's interesting to me that the impact near the South Pole may be the direct cause of a pole reversal (according to the article). Does an impact pole reversal reset the clock between reversals?

    Between the impact damage and the pole reversal, it would be interesting to see if corresponding evidence of the strike would be found at/near the North Pole, under the theory that strikes have large effects on the region opposite strikes on the Earth.

  • 65 milli years ago? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:04PM (#10033541)
    That's 24 days ago.

    The dinosaurs were wiped out on July 28 2004?

  • You really are missing something...... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheAxeMaster ( 762000 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @03:11PM (#10033572)
    a lot of people believe that the 65m impact was centered over land NOT covered by ice and snow, as in the central point in which all current continents used to be connected (pangea).

    That impact would have crushed mountains and created enormous amounts of dust from them. The 780k impact hit a huge block of ice and snow, i.e. no dust to scatter in the first place. I really doubt it would have affected any land life at all, antarctica being so far from land inhabited by anything more than penguins and stuff. Ocean life probably got pretty roughed up at least close to the impact.

  • Oh my (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    The poor widdle penguins. If they all died, Linus may have picked Walruses instead. Walnix?

  • Human evolution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cruachan ( 113813 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @04:01PM (#10033834)
    Does this match up with the proposed theory that humans went through a short period of being reduced to a very few individuals - the so called 'mitochondrial eve' hypothesis?

  • Location? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 21, 2004 @04:14PM (#10033899)
    The article doesn't say where in Antartica or even what conference. After much searching I found this [newstrove.com] which says,
    Using satellite technology to observe the Antarctic gravity field from thousands of miles above the earth, the international team of geophysicists found evidence of many large meteorite impact sites across the entire continent. Presenting their research to the International Geographical Congress in Glasgow this week, the results of the imaging revealed that the sites extend from the Ross Sea in the vicinity of the Pacific Ocean, to the Weddell Sea south of the Atlantic Ocean. However, those wishing to make a journey to Antarctica to see for themselves the craters left by the interstellar objects will be disappointed.
    That sounds like most of West Antarctica.

  • Homo Erectus was there (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oquigley ( 572410 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @04:28PM (#10033966)
    Wow! Only 780 thousand years ago?
    At that point our hominid ancestors were strolling around southern Africa. By then we had stone tools and the occasional use of fire. That's really recent in a hominid lineage that goes back, what 6 million years? They lived through a 3-7 kilometer asteroid impact! Can you imagine?
    Good thing it didn't land a few thousand miles to the north...

  • Several questions (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Saturday August 21, 2004 @05:05PM (#10034157)
    Well, we seem to have come through the Second Impact realtively unscathed :)

    However this report raises a lot of questions that it doesn't answer.

    First of all, they seem to be talking about a single strike, but they first talk about "the crater" and then later "the holes" and "the craters." Are we talking about one crater or many? Did the person who wrote the article typo, or are the scientists being that unspecific?

    Second of all, wasn't the Antarctic continent still near the south pole 780k years ago? That seems to mean that either the meteor hit at a very extreme angle, or it was _far_ out of the elliptic. In either case, it would be a very rare occurance.

    On the other hand, magnetic reversals are _not_ a very rare occurance, they happen about once every 700,000 years. Why is he assuming that the very rare occurance caused the frequent and mostly regular occurance? It seems much more likely that it was just a coincidence. "There is no other explanation as to why this took place" yeah, and there is no other explanation for the other several _hundred_ nearly identical events either, because we haven't figured out why they happen yet! So is he proposing that Antarctica gets hit by a giant meteor about every 700k years like clockwork?

    Finally exactly how "huge" are these craters, and what were the climatic conditions 780k years ago? If the climate was similar and Antarctica was near the south pole and covered with ice, wouldn't a "huge" strike have melted/dispersed quite a lot of the ice and caused ocean levels to rise?

  • They should check again. I mean, there could be pyramids under all that ice [imdb.com].

  • That impact created dust storms and fires that, by blocking out the sun, cooled the Earth's atmosphere so much that the dinosaurs could not survive.

    Environmentalists take note, we now have the solution to your biggest fears of Global Warming. We just need to refine the technique a bit.

  • I'm no scientist, but I think the B612 project is almost on the right track. IMHO the easier way to stop asteroids is to move space rocks to improvise some very dense, rock barriers and not to count on a rendevous with the killer asteroid itself.

  • Am I the only one who didn't immediately think of Second Impact [wordiq.com] the disaster in Neon Genesis Evangelion that destroyed Antarctica and killed half the worlds population. But of course the 'impact' story was a fictional explanation for an event in a fictional anime ... fiction within fiction .. is that like a double negative for reality. Must be, the proof is right there under the ice ... heh heh.

  • So the initial location of the firey cataclysm that wipeout of the dominate species on Earth is now frozen over. Hmm... so when someone stipulates Hell freezing over first, does that mean we can now point out the Antartic Circle and tell them they're late?

  • Asteroids? (Score:4, Funny)

    by feidaykin ( 158035 ) on Sunday August 22, 2004 @05:53AM (#10036817) Journal
    Everyone remain calm. I spent countless hours in arcades preparing for such an impact. That's the real reason the dinosaurs died: they didn't have arcades.

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