Re: Meteoric and Cometary impacts in historical times - Hard Evidence

From: Martyn Harrison (nospam_at_spammers.of.the.world.unite)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:29:43 GMT

Apparently on date Thu, 21 Oct 2004 15:24:57 -0400, wbarwell
<wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com> said:

>Joe Jefferson wrote:
>> Eric Stevens wrote:
>>>
>>> similar to the one which created Lake Chiemsee. The apparent absence
>>> of reports cannot be attributed to there being nothing to report.
>>
>> 6,000 years of recorded history we should expect there have been about
>> 20 such impacts with no more than 6 or 7 hitting on land. For most of
>> human history the majority of the Earth's surface was very sparsely
>> populated. And even if somebody was in the right place to see something,
>> chances are they didn't know how to write. The bottom line is that it
>> wouldn't surprise me at all if Tunguska was the first event of this size
>> ever to be noticed by people able to record what they had seen.
>
>Back in the 80's there was some species of event off of South Africa.
>Apparently it was big enough to show up on satellite.

This was only important if it was a covert nuclear test. If dismissed as "just
another minor impact from outer space" I doubt it would merit many column
inches.

>And in the late 80's a weather satellite apparently observed a sizeable
>meterorite hit in the Pacific ocean.
>With 75 of the earth being water, I suspect many hits will be at sea.

They will be. And even when they're on land, they're highly unlikely to hit
anything important. That's not to say we can't have another K-T impactor next
year, it's the sort of thing that can happen on extreme ends of the normal
curve. But it would be a freak event.

As we add cities and populate regions more and more densely, this threat will
increase but equally well, volcanoes and that happen and are of far more
significance, e.g. Portugal, Pompeii, Krakatoa and so on. Quite a few
historical events *are* attributable to natural causes and I doubt the
"hidebound nay sayers" deny that Vesuvius has killed its share of the ancient
Romans, despite having their heads in the sand. So the alternative is they know
what's probably real and what probably isn't.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/sa/SAIRC/1997/50.html

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