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Astronomers Upset About Asteroid Panic

Posted by simoniker on from the construct-identical-trashteroid dept.

DrMorpheus writes "According to the New Scientist, astronomers are horrified by press scares over asteroids - including the recent furore over QQ47 - which briefly had a one-in-a-million chance of crashing into our planet in 2014. So much so that they are toning down the scale they use to rate the threat posed by asteroids in an attempt to discourage journalists from covering potential collisions. Some even want the way asteroids are assessed to be completely overhauled."

2 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Meanwhile, on usenet... by inertia187 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.astro.seti,sci.answers,news.answers
    Subject: stinking reporters
    Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU
    Followup-To: press
    Date: 17 Sep 2003 19:35:25 -0400
    User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
    X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com

    Ok polpee. We need to reign it in a bit on the atroesid cemmtons, uamky? Form now on, I want all ceerrnnsdpcooe hnavig to do wtih eatrh killres slambrced like tihs, ukmay?

    No more talk aoubt how tsehe atsdoiers, umkay? If you're ccnettaod by the psers, jsut rinmed them taht tehy're more lleiky to get kellid by lgiitnnhg 10,000 tmies an hour than to have an ateosrid flal on them, then hang up...uamky?

    --
    A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
  2. hu? by gsparrow · · Score: 0, Redundant

    So we are or arn't goin to be hit? LOL