View single post by Joe Kelley

Posted: Sat Sep 26th, 2009 11:51 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB3G0rvCIJc

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/04/asteroid_cretac.html

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/asteroid-impacts-are-the-biggest-threat-to-advanced-life-in-the-galaxy-stephen-hawking.html

Stephen Hawking believes that one of the major factors in the possible scarcity of intelligent life in our galaxy is the high probability of an asteroid or comet colliding with inhabited planets. We have observed, Hawking points out in Life in the Universe, the collision of a comet, Schumacher-Levi, with Jupiter (below), which produced a series of enormous fireballs, plumes many thousands of kilometers high, hot "bubbles" of gas in the atmosphere, and large dark "scars" on the atmosphere which had lifetimes on the order of weeks.