Scary Thoughts About Space From Gregg Easterbrook

The Earth gets significantly ‘hit’ by comets and asteroids much more often than anyone thought.

“The Sky is Falling,” is an article about the threat to Earth by natural space objects. It’s in the current issue of the Atlantic Magazine; a magazine held in higher esteem than its circulation numbers would imply.

The author is Gregg Easterbrook, who writes and lectures about lots of subjects and is especially well known for his sports writing. In this piece he talks about Dallas Abbot’s discovery – the Earth gets significantly ‘hit’ by comets and asteroids much more often than anyone thought.

She (Dallas Abbot) began searching for underwater craters caused by impacts rather than by other forces, such as volcanoes. What she has found is spine-chilling: evidence that several enormous asteroids or comets have slammed into our planet quite recently, in geologic terms. If Abbott is right, then you may be here today, reading this magazine, only because by sheer chance those objects struck the ocean rather than land.

Easterbrook’s response: task NASA with this responsibility, replacing its now outmoded and valueless manned space program&#185.

Here’s a 10 minute lecture on the subject from Easterbook. Very interesting.

&#185 – Easterbrook and I agree on this wholeheartedly, but not on Global Warming, where I remain skeptical.