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(meteorobs) Let play a game with Impact Information

List All members and Sirko

Sirko wrote:
> > Let's not get paranoid about this hazard!
> 
> I perfectly agree with Phil and Wayne!

The GAME  with Impact Information:

I will paraphrase a piece of recently published information on impact and
the list can comment or critique on this authors remarks.  Then I will pass
these comment on to the astronomer/ astrophysist expert author of these
statements and repeat the critique's and ask for clarification and
explanation of his facts to support his/her statements. Maybe in this way
we can all become educated as to what the real hazard is or is not. You can
find the author's name on my web page "Bigrock" is you search for "List
Answer" and click on the link there.

Well here goes:The First Author's statement

"There is certainly no shortage of devastating phenomena associated 
with large impacts. That impact events may play an extremely important role
in the 
modern history of life on Earth seems clear; but the impact rate was
much higher in the distant past. To what extent has the origin, stability
and fate of life on Earth been regulated by impacts? Impacts
upon the early atmosphere, before the origin of life on Earth, must
have generated simple organic molecules such as formaldehyde and 
hydrogen cyanide, which react with each other and with water to
make a wide range of interesting molecules that can serve as the 
building blocks of life. Thus early impacts, like other high-energy 
processes such as as ultraviolet light, cosmic ray irradiation, and
lighning
discharges, support the production of the essential components of life.
But once the first primative, delicate life forms have arisen, these
energetic processes become a hazard to them. It is trivially obvious
that a virus will not fare well when struck by lighning; it is not the
fate of single primitive organisms that concern us. The problem is 
that a large enough impact can deliver enough energy to heat the
atmosphere to sterilizing temperature, raise the temperature of the 
oceans to the boiling point, and boil the oceans away completely.
Even life huddled about hydrothermal vents on the abyssal ocean
floor, perfectly sheltered even from events as cataclysmic as a nearby 
supernova explosion, would be destroyed. It seems most likely, in 
fact, that primitive life arose and was destroyed several times over by 
very large impacts. "

Victor

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
Victor Noto - Kissimmee, Florida USA
vnn2@phoenixat.com
http://www.phoenixat.com/~vnn2/BIGROCK.htm
Website theme quote:
"Life really is a Rock and 
the Big Rock giveth and taketh away all life!!" 
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> 
> After all, the fact that we are living and communicationg proves, that
the
> last really devasting impact threatening all mankind was at least several
> million years ago. We should really not get paranoid and fear the next
one
> would happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
> It is right that NEO research is important, but I rather doubt that panic
> making is a proper way to get the own research funded.
> 
> This reminds me to a silly number I came across several times in public
> lectures about meteorite impacts. I think it was even to be found in a
> recent issue of S&T: On average, each year (!!) about 20 humans are
killed
> by large meteorite impacts.
> 
> You didn't know that? Well, the equation is quite simple: It is
considered
> that the really big blasts happen about every hundred million years or
so.
> At such occasions, a third of all mankind may die. 2 billion divided by a
> hundred million gives an average of 20 casulties per year...
> 
> Of course, such an equation is *complete* nonsense, it's like raping
> statistics, but you find that again and again!
> 
> Sirko
> 
>
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> *  Dipl.-Inform. Sirko Molau                  *                         
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