Word: asteroidal
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...changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis--and generally dismissed. Now two scientists, writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research, have proposed a novel idea: the possibility that our planet was once encircled by a huge, Saturn-like ring created by a glancing blow from an asteroid...
...wouldn't have been the first time Earth's climate was altered by a large incoming object. Thirty million years earlier, the impact of the asteroid believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs enshrouded the Earth in dust that blocked sunlight and caused temperatures to fall. But that shroud dissipated, possibly in a matter of months, and the climate quickly warmed up again. Whatever caused the Eocene cooling must have lingered much longer...
...most likely explanation, say Peter Fawcett of the University of New Mexico and Mark Boslough of the Sandia National Laboratory, is planetary rings. They speculate that a large asteroid hit the Earth at an oblique angle and plowed across the surface for some distance before ricocheting away. In the process, the theory goes, it sprayed molten and vaporized Earth and asteroid chunks into space, where some pieces went into orbit and eventually formed an opaque ring...
...optimist or a pessimist about our future. I answer that I'm cautiously optimistic. We face big problems that will do us in if we don't solve them. But we are capable of solving them. The risk we face isn't that of an asteroid collision beyond our ability to avoid. Instead our problems are of our own making, and so we can stop making them. The only thing lacking is the necessary political will...
...inscription. SPACE The End Is-Kind of-Nigh Maybe Astronomers set a new date-and time-for the end of civilization. It will happen at 11:47 on the morning of Feb. 1, 2019. That is, if the earth were to be hit by a newly spotted asteroid called 2002 NT7. The chance of the 2-km-wide rock scoring a bull's-eye lengthened from 1 in 60,000 to 1 in 75,000 as astronomers continually recalculated its orbit. If the lump of space rock did hit the earth it could wipe out a continent, throw up dustclouds...