[meteorite-list] A NYTimes meteoritic editorial

From: Howard Wu <freewu2000_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:17:39 2004
Message-ID: <20031204200258.38989.qmail_at_web60003.mail.yahoo.com>

--0-620114322-1070568178=:38306
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hi List,
 
Here's a meteoritic extinction inspired editorial in the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/opinion/04THU4.html
 
You may have to sign up to see this if your not a NYTimes reader, but that is free. So here it is below:
 
A Meteoric View of Life
Published: December 4, 2003

 
One of the great advantages of being short-lived by geological standards is that life seems relatively stable to us. In the span of time that we humans have been fully ourselves as a species — the oldest human fossils are only 160,000 years old — life on this planet has gone on essentially uninterrupted, no matter how cataclysmic our own history has been. We live in the midst of one of the great extinctions, largely caused by humans, and yet we've experienced nothing like the meteor that crashed into the earth 65 million years ago and destroyed the dinosaurs.
That extinction is dwarfed by the one that took place 251 million years ago, an event some scientists call the "great dying." As much as 90 percent of the life on earth may have disappeared. Scientists studying new evidence, including meteorite fragments from Antarctica, now argue that the extinction then — the greatest of them all — was probably caused by a meteor impact as well.

The explosion would have been colossal enough, but it also sparked increased volcanism around the globe, compounding the dire climatic changes that were caused by the airborne debris from the collision itself.

Every day many meteors, most of them tiny, reach the earth's atmosphere. It's a condition of the astronomical neighborhood we live in. But it is hard to take in the fact that catastrophic meteor impacts have played such an enormous part in the history of life on this planet.

 


---------------------------------
Download Yahoo! Messenger now for a chance to WIN Robbie Williams "Live At Knebworth DVD"
--0-620114322-1070568178=:38306
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

<DIV>Hi List,</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>Here's a meteoritic extinction inspired editorial in the New York Times.</DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/opinion/04THU4.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/opinion/04THU4.html</A></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>You may have to sign up to see this if your not a NYTimes reader, but that is free. So here it is below:</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>
<H2>A Meteoric View of Life</H2></NYT_HEADLINE><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0"></NYT_BYLINE><IMG height=5 alt="" src="http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif" width=1><BR><FONT class=footer size=1>Published: December 4, 2003</FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>One of the great advantages of being short-lived by geological standards is that life seems relatively stable to us. In the span of time that we humans have been fully ourselves as a species — the oldest human fossils are only 160,000 years old — life on this planet has gone on essentially uninterrupted, no matter how cataclysmic our own history has been. We live in the midst of one of the great extinctions, largely caused by humans, and yet we've experienced nothing like the meteor that crashed into the earth 65 million years ago and destroyed the dinosaurs.
<P>That extinction is dwarfed by the one that took place 251 million years ago, an event some scientists call the "great dying." As much as 90 percent of the life on earth may have disappeared. Scientists studying new evidence, including meteorite fragments from Antarctica, now argue that the extinction then — the greatest of them all — was probably caused by a meteor impact as well.</P>
<P>The explosion would have been colossal enough, but it also sparked increased volcanism around the globe, compounding the dire climatic changes that were caused by the airborne debris from the collision itself. </P>
<P>Every day many meteors, most of them tiny, reach the earth's atmosphere. It's a condition of the astronomical neighborhood we live in. But it is hard to take in the fact that catastrophic meteor impacts have played such an enormous part in the history of life on this planet.</P></DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV><p><hr size=1><font face="Arial" size="2"><a href="http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/mail/tagline_messenger/*http://download.yahoo.com/dl/intl/ymsgruk.exe">Download
Yahoo! Messenger</a> now for a chance to <a href="http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/mail/tagline_messenger/*http://messenger.promotions.yahoo.com/rwuk" target="_blank">WIN</a>
Robbie Williams &quot;Live At Knebworth DVD&quot;</font>
--0-620114322-1070568178=:38306--
Received on Thu 04 Dec 2003 03:02:58 PM PST