{"id":298914,"date":"2010-02-09T16:14:54","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T21:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=10968"},"modified":"2010-02-09T16:14:54","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T21:14:54","slug":"more-good-science-in-huffpo-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/298914","title":{"rendered":"More good science in HuffPo | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/files\/2009\/10\/netherlands_meteor-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"netherlands_meteor\" title=\"netherlands_meteor\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-6200\"\/>Steve Newton of the wonderful <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/ncse.com\/\">National Center for Science Education<\/a> has written <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/steven-newton\/the-deep-impacts-of-unfun_b_438148.html\">another article promoting science in the Huffington Post<\/a>, this time about asteroid impacts. And special bonus; he gives your loyal host here a shout-out.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, he mentions that I have said that the Hale-Bopp comet was larger than what wiped out the dinosaurs. It&#8217;s true: the object that created the Chicxulub crater off the coast of the Yucatan was something like 10 km (6 miles) across. The nucleus of Hale-Bopp was roughly <strong>60<\/strong> km (36 miles) across, meaning <strong>it would have had something like 100 times the mass of the dinosaur killer<\/strong>. I have vivid nightmares about asteroid impacts, and one 100x the size of the K-T extinction event is beyond scary.<\/p>\n<p>Right now we lack the capability to stop such a comet impact; Hale-Bopp was discovered less than two years before it sailed by the Earth. It missed us by a huge margin, but had it been aimed at us things would look a lot different around here right now. We may be years away from being able to stop such an event, but as I&#8217;ve written before, people like Rusty Schweikart and Dan Durda are seriously considering what we can do, and <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.b612foundation.org\/\">have even started the B612 Foundation<\/a> to look into it. <\/p>\n<p>If we&#8217;re serious about such threats, were just a few years away from being able to prevent them. Given that statistically big impacts are very rare and only happen every few hundred thousand years or so, I&#8217;m rather liking where we stand right now. <em>But that&#8217;s if we actually do something now<\/em>. We need to start working on mitigation techniques, and rockets to carry them. I&#8217;m glad the B612 Foundation is working on it.<\/p>\n<p><em>Related articles: <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2010\/01\/08\/a-pro-science-article-on-huffpo\/\">A Pro-science article on HuffPo?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/2-KaPkx034wE3yEbuKbfYZQYizY\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/2-KaPkx034wE3yEbuKbfYZQYizY\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/2-KaPkx034wE3yEbuKbfYZQYizY\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/2-KaPkx034wE3yEbuKbfYZQYizY\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/BadAstronomyBlog\/~4\/zm1ab4NcKzA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/VE_WhL_P5oQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Newton of the wonderful National Center for Science Education has written another article promoting science in the Huffington Post, this time about asteroid impacts. And special bonus; he gives your loyal host here a shout-out. Specifically, he mentions that I have said that the Hale-Bopp comet was larger than what wiped out the dinosaurs. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}