[Brilliant]

More interesting to me is the fact that scientists say that if the Earth were struck by an object that large, it would wipe out all higher life forms. So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

[screaminsunshine]

Atlantis. No Doubt.

[SunkenCiv]

The sea.

The Eltanin impact about 2 million years ago hit in the Southern Pacific (I think it was the Pacific) near Antarctica. The submerged crater was found during the multi-year International Geophysical Year in the 1950s, and named after the boat that carried the researchers. Subsequently the iridium signature of the impact has been identified.

[pepsionice]

Mass populations can’t. But you can find various places on the earth where a society could survive through a bad period, and just continue on.

If you had to pick a realistic threat to society...the impact threat is 99 times more realistic than climate change...yet for every dollar spent on climate change...one cent gets spent on impact and meteor studies.

[stormer]

Overstated, but supported. From http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-ever-happened-to-the "The fossils show a statistical variation in extinction rates having a period of approximately 26 million years. The two periodic peaks of extinction after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, 65 million years ago, are at the end of the Eocene (roughly 37 million years ago) and in the Middle Miocene (about 17 million years ago).

[El Gato]

So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

Who says they did? Think of it as a celestial reset button.

[UCANSEE2]

More interesting to me is the fact that scientists say that if the Earth were struck by an object that large, it would wipe out all higher life forms. So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

Maybe we were not the higher life form?

[Swordmaker]

More interesting to me is the fact that scientists say that if the Earth were struck by an object that large, it would wipe out all higher life forms. So how did the higher life forms we have survive that?

six kilometers is not that big... not any where as big as the 241 KM diameter of the crater left from the event that is thought to have ended the reign of the dinosaurs...