{"id":32650,"date":"2016-12-14T13:47:45","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T21:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/nasa-scientist-warns-earth-is-due-for-an-extinction-level-event"},"modified":"2017-06-04T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T20:58:07","slug":"nasa-scientist-warns-earth-is-due-for-an-extinction-level-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/nasa-scientist-warns-earth-is-due-for-an-extinction-level-event","title":{"rendered":"NASA scientist warns Earth is due for an \u2018extinction-level event\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasa-scientist-warns-earth-is-due-for-an-extinction-level-event.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In news certain to take the bounce out of your step, a NASA scientist says Earth is due for an \u201cextinction-level\u201d event that we basically would have no way of stopping.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Joseph Nuth of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center rang the alarm Monday in San Francisco, <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2016\/12\/nasa-scientist-earth-is-due-for-extinction-level-event.html?mid=twitter_dailyintelligencer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>New York Magazine<\/em> reports.<\/a> The comet that spelled disaster for the dinosaurs hit 65 million years ago, and Nuth said the massive asteroids and comets that could wipe out civilization usually strike \u201c50 to 60 million years apart,\u201d making such an event overdue.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014, scientists first spotted a large comet barreling toward Mars just 22 months before it came perilously close to hitting the planet. That wasn\u2019t enough time to do anything, Nuth said, proof that \u201cthe biggest problem, basically, is there\u2019s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment.\u201d To prevent a catastrophic event, Nuth suggests NASA create a rocket that can go in storage, ready to be used if a huge comet comes our way. \u201cIt could mitigate the possibility of a sneaky asteroid coming in from a place that\u2019s hard to observe, like from the sun,\u201d Nuth said. The way 2016 has gone so far, you might want to start scanning the sky. <a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/theweek.com\/authors\/catherine-garcia\"><em>Catherine Garcia<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/theweek.com\/speedreads\/667239\/nasa-scientist-warns-earth-due-extinctionlevel-event\">http:\/\/theweek.com\/speedreads\/667239\/nasa-scientist-warns-ea...evel-event<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In news certain to take the bounce out of your step, a NASA scientist says Earth is due for an \u201cextinction-level\u201d event that we basically would have no way of stopping. Dr. Joseph Nuth of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center rang the alarm Monday in San Francisco, New York Magazine reports. The comet that spelled [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65587,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32650\/revisions\/65587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}