What are the chances?

I was waiting in line at a deli a little while ago, watching the CNN news crawl on their TV up on the wall. This headline scrolls by: "Space object similar in size to the asteroid which hit Siberia in 1908, destroying sixty million trees, has a 1 in" and at that exact moment, they cut to commercial! So I'm thinking, what is that second number? If it's "2", I better start praying; if it's 2,000,000, I probably don't need to be too concerned. The other thing I want to know is what event with this asteroid are they giving the probability for? Hitting Earth? Missing Earth?

I just hate being left hanging like that!
 
If that crawl had lasted 1/2 a second longer I would've been even more anxious: the second number is only 75. I would have been thinking, "A one in 75 chance of what?

Turns out the odds are for an impact with Mars, not Earth.
Link to asteroid story
 
Given the enormous distances we are talking about here, a one in seventy-five chance that an asteroid strike will occur on the planet orbiting next to ours is pretty scary.

I hadn't heard anythng about this.

January 30th, huh?

Barbara
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
I get what you are saying - DF has a habit of turning the channel RIGHT when the narrator would say "And the murderer was CLICK or the Browns and the Steelers met today and the Browns CLICK or Try zippy cream today - apply directly to leg stubble with the wooden spatula, place a sheet of paper on the leg and CLICK or "You don't make much sense Pilgrim ah ha ha...I'm a ridin' out of this here town see and you better not CLICK....

I get it - VERY frustrating. Especially when it concerns your own mortality. Like the wax commercial - I mean have you ever PUT that crud on your legs and peeled a sheet of it off? Asteroids hold no power over a good waxing
 
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