[104843] in Cypherpunks
Re: Dinosaur killer probability
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marshall Clow)
Thu Oct 29 16:06:17 1998
In-Reply-To: <199810291915.NAA12009@mixer.visi.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 11:29:41 -0800
To: Bruce Schneier <schneier@counterpane.com>,
lcs Mixmaster Remailer <mix@anon.lcs.mit.edu>, coderpunks@toad.com
From: Marshall Clow <mclow@owl.csusm.edu>
Reply-To: Marshall Clow <mclow@owl.csusm.edu>
At 1:15 PM -0600 10/29/98, Bruce Schneier wrote:
>At 06:20 PM 10/29/98 +0000, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote:
>>What is the probability that a comet or asteroid similar in size to
>>that which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs will hit in the next
>>few months?
>
>Someone should look up the frequency of dinosaur-killing-sized
>asteroids--one per n years--but the equation would be
>
> 1 in 12n/m, where m is the number of months in a "few."
>
>Isn't n around 100,000?
Don't forget the telescopes, though.
You have to discount that possibility by a large factor because
no one has seen (or announced) a large asteroid heading this way.
Remember the brou-ha-ha a few months ago about a large asteroid
that would come within 50K miles of the earth in 2012 or so?
-- Marshall
"The era of big government is over."
Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996
Marshall Clow Adobe Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu>
