Excerpts from and links to recent news stories of interest:
Giant asteroid ‘heading for Earth in 2182′: A giant asteroid called 1999 RQ36 may crash into Earth on September 24 2182, scientists believe.
A team of experts, including some working for NASA, believes the 612-yards-wide object has a one-in-a-thousand chance of an impact 172 years from now.
The odds of a crash are considerably shorter than those given for the asteroid Apophis, which has a 1 in 250,000 chance of striking Earth in 2036….read entire article from The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Here comes Katla? Being kind of a volcano/earthquake geek, I regularly check in on the recent California earthquake records, the Kilauea activity, and, in the past couple months since the Eyjafjallajokull, the earthquake activity near it that might presage an eruption of Eyja’s big sister, Katla. Historically, eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull are followed by eruptions of Katla, which are an order of magnitude larger. The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull disrupted air travel in Europe for weeks. It’s interesting to consider what a big volcano Katla might do. There is also the fact that Katla erupts every 40-80 years and hasn’t erupted since 1918, making this a potentially bigger buildup to an eruption. Some of the Katla eruptions in the past have gone on for months….read entire article from Discover Magazine
Global Cold Wave May Be Looming — This Time, the Science Is Good: In a cosmically ironic twist of fate and timing, nature may be set to empirically freeze any and all anthropogenic global warming talk: a blast of Arctic cold may encase the earth in an icy grip not seen for 200 years….read entire article from Pajamas Media