h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's happened before...but....
Bad things always [ well, almost, sometimes ] happen in threes.

Gosh don't we feel smug. "Nossa" got it wrong again. Or did he?
Did anyone see the news report from New Zealand showing some footage of a Meteor hit?
A blinding blue flash, and a loud sonic boom type noise. With video footage of a really odd looking cloud of smoke and dust.
I suppose it could have been a Vogon......

I remember reading somewhere that we Earthlings should count ourselves lucky, being that the planet's been hit twice this century by meteors large enough to flatten a city... and they've both landed in Siberia.

(Okay, we Earthlings who don't live in Siberia should count ourselves lucky. I bet the Siberians are rather down about it)

-- Yoz

We're actually due a 'KT' event around now.
The last one was when that comet/meteor/bloody-big-rock struck the Earth and created the nuclear winter effect that killed off the dinosaurs (according to current theory).
I just hope that Hollywood's got it dead right and the next one hits America

Did Nostradamus ever write " What K-T did next "?

Does KT work at Pret's?
She serves a mean croissant. On the subject of meteor/comet/bloody quick chunks of rock, falling from the sky. My Grandfather remembers seeing the night sky glowing quite brightly following the meteor hit in Tunguska, earlier this century. A perk of being a young insomniac Yorkshire man I suppose. If their big, let 'em land there I say.

What's KT?

I think K stands for Cretaceous and T for Tertiary.
So the original theorized 'K-T' event (asteroid strike or whatever) marks a mass extinction that occurred about 65 million years ago that was so pronounced in its effect that it defined the crossover from one geological era on the Earth to another.
'A K-T event' as a phrase is now being used in a wider context as any event affecting the Earth that can have a critical worldwide effect on the geosphere and/or the ecosphere. So, if a 2 mile wide asteroid hit the Earth right now it would cause the extinction of many plant and animal species, perhaps by putting so much crud in the upper atmosphere that sunlight would not make it through to the Earth's surface for a number of years.
Possible future asteroid impacts with Earth are being monitored by NASA amongst others,
see http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/index.html.
So although Deep Impact/Armageddon etc seem to be pure fiction, there is a serious threat 'out there'.
I am certainly no expert in this field, however, having picked this up mainly from scientific journals and TV programmes, so I would appreciate comments on this from qualified geologists.