Author Topic: Why Are We Suddenly Getting Hit By So Many Space Rocks?  (Read 1484 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Online mystery-ak

  • Owner
  • Administrator
  • ******
  • Posts: 381,855
  • Gender: Female
  • Let's Go Brandon!
Why Are We Suddenly Getting Hit By So Many Space Rocks?
« on: February 19, 2013, 03:24:01 pm »

Why Are We Suddenly Getting Hit By So Many Space Rocks?

By Phil Plait

 |

Posted Monday, Feb. 18, 2013, at 7:45 AM


I suspect Photoshop.


The sky is falling!

At least, that’s what I’m hearing on the news and on social media. A lot of people are scared about asteroid impacts right now, and it’s hard to blame them. When you have a near-miss by an asteroid the size of an office building just hours after a monster meteor rocks Russia which happened just a day before a fireball blazed over California which was just days after reports of a similar event over Cuba…well, it really does seem like the Universe is trying to kill us.

Are we under attack? Are all these rocks from the skies related?

In a word: nope. It’s coincidence.

Kick in the posteriori

No, really! Of all the things I’ve been explaining since the Chelyabinsk meteor on Friday, this is the one that people have the hardest time with. I completely sympathize; you can go your whole life without hearing about a major meteor event, and then to get so many at the same time…the feeling that they must be related is overwhelming.

A lot of that is due to human nature. Our brains love to connect events that happen around the same time, even if they’re unrelated. The proper name for this is post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means “after this, therefore because of this”. In other words, something happens, then something else happens, and we think the two are related. You find a penny on the ground, and then you meet the love of your life. It’s a lucky penny! Or it’s a coincidence, and your brain links them together.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/18/asteroids_and_meteors_why_are_we_suddenly_seeing_so_many.html
Proud Supporter of Tunnel to Towers
Support the USO
Democrat Party...the Party of Infanticide

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
-Matthew 6:34

Offline andy58-in-nh

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 9,740
  • Gender: Male
Re: Why Are We Suddenly Getting Hit By So Many Space Rocks?
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2013, 04:44:53 pm »
The Universe is shooting skeet with Earth as a target.
"The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left Alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn