2008 Woodie Awards
Science Q & A
Q. Could we be wiped out like the dinosaurs in an apocalyptic event?
Rachael Federico
Issue date: 1/24/08 Section: Sci/Tech
A. Did you know that scientists discovered a 22-hundred pound rodent in Uruguay? It lived two-million years ago. Apparently, these rodents were larger than bulls. The biggest rodent we have now is "only" about three feet long. (Don't worry, it lives in the Amazon). My point here is simply that there were a lot of strange creatures, including mammals, that became extinct relatively quickly, geologically speaking, of course.
So, the answer to the question is yes. The most ominous event seems to be inadaptable global climate change that wreaks havoc on the natural world. However, this topic has been covered in the Q and A, as well as by faculty members in the above section, already. If you are really an eager beaver to learn about the melting glaciers and the current (deplorable) state of our environment, Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth is a must-see. For our current purposes, I'll move on to some other potential tragedies.
The greatest, or most likely, threat to the world as we know it is impact by a large asteroid. (The difference between an asteroid and a meteoroid, in case you are wondering, is the size. An asteroid is a lot bigger; a meteoroid is less than 50 meters in diameter). As the most popular theory goes, this is what "offed" the dinos. There is an asteroid the size of a football field that has a one in twenty-five chance of striking Mars at the end of this month. If it does strike, it'll "blast a half-mile wide crater," according to scientists. If something of that size hit Earth, it would likely explode in the atmosphere because of heat, and then the damage would be comparable to a nuclear bomb detonating. In fact, the Earth is hit by meteoroids (called meteorites, once they hit) on a relatively regular basis. Since most of the globe is uninhabited-oceans cover about 70% of the planet, added to all the uninhabitable land in Antarctica and Siberia-it is not often noticed by most people. On June 30, 1908 in Tunguska, Russia, a meteorite exploded in the air, unleashing an estimated 10-15 megatons of destruction (that's about 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima), leveling an estimated 80-million trees over an 800 square mile area. It also registered as a 5.0 on the Richter scale. It only takes an explosion of a meteorite of five to ten meters in diameter to release about the same amount of energy as a nuclear bomb. The largest known crater on Earth is the Barringer Crater near Winslow, Arizona. The meteor was 50 meters across and the resulting hole is about 4,000 feet across and 570 feet deep. Yes, that's a big hole. And, the energy released would be more than enough to level Manhattan.
So, the answer to the question is yes. The most ominous event seems to be inadaptable global climate change that wreaks havoc on the natural world. However, this topic has been covered in the Q and A, as well as by faculty members in the above section, already. If you are really an eager beaver to learn about the melting glaciers and the current (deplorable) state of our environment, Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth is a must-see. For our current purposes, I'll move on to some other potential tragedies.
The greatest, or most likely, threat to the world as we know it is impact by a large asteroid. (The difference between an asteroid and a meteoroid, in case you are wondering, is the size. An asteroid is a lot bigger; a meteoroid is less than 50 meters in diameter). As the most popular theory goes, this is what "offed" the dinos. There is an asteroid the size of a football field that has a one in twenty-five chance of striking Mars at the end of this month. If it does strike, it'll "blast a half-mile wide crater," according to scientists. If something of that size hit Earth, it would likely explode in the atmosphere because of heat, and then the damage would be comparable to a nuclear bomb detonating. In fact, the Earth is hit by meteoroids (called meteorites, once they hit) on a relatively regular basis. Since most of the globe is uninhabited-oceans cover about 70% of the planet, added to all the uninhabitable land in Antarctica and Siberia-it is not often noticed by most people. On June 30, 1908 in Tunguska, Russia, a meteorite exploded in the air, unleashing an estimated 10-15 megatons of destruction (that's about 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima), leveling an estimated 80-million trees over an 800 square mile area. It also registered as a 5.0 on the Richter scale. It only takes an explosion of a meteorite of five to ten meters in diameter to release about the same amount of energy as a nuclear bomb. The largest known crater on Earth is the Barringer Crater near Winslow, Arizona. The meteor was 50 meters across and the resulting hole is about 4,000 feet across and 570 feet deep. Yes, that's a big hole. And, the energy released would be more than enough to level Manhattan.
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