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Comet May Have Missed Earth By a Few hundred Kilometers

Posted by samzenpus on from the old-news dept.

First time accepted submitter afree87 writes "A re-analysis of historical observations at a Mexican observatory suggests Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago. On August 12th and 13th 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation, some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun. This month, Hector Manterola at the National Autonomous University of Mexico suggests these were fragments of a comet. 'If they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event.'"

9 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. May have missed ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    May have missed ? I'm fairly certain it definitely missed.

    1. Re:May have missed ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Often it's helpful to read the entire sentence, rather than just the first half. You should be OK on these sentences though, as I've structured them to accommodate your particular reading disability.

    2. Re:May have missed ? by niftydude · · Score: 4, Funny

      May have missed ? I'm fairly certain it definitely missed.

      Nope - it didn't miss. I was the only survivor as I happened to be exploring some very deep natural caverns at the time.

      You are all just figments of my imagination.

      --
      You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
    3. Re:May have missed ? by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      And Slashdot is the best your imagination can come up with. Come on man.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    4. Re:May have missed ? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Funny

      I think you may have missed the humorous nature of his post. No, on second thoughts, you definitely missed it.

      That's because, in space, no one can hear you go "whoosh".

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. A little too early by SpelledBackwards · · Score: 4, Funny

    And likely just a *little* too early to blame Nikola Tesla... if we would have had any conspiracy theorists left.

  3. If you want to be taken seriously by actionbastard · · Score: 4, Funny

    As a scientist, don't author your paper with the font set to Comic Sans.

    --
    Sig this!
  4. Re:Buckshot: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    He probably works in base 5 himself, and rounded it off to the nice round number 101100 (5), and converted it to decimals for the publication.

  5. Re:*shiver* by Thud457 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let's go burn down the observatory so this will never happen again!

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff