[EUPHORIC]

KOWABUNGA. At least with an asteroid we might be able to do a little target practice with some of our nuclear toys and have some chance of stopping it but aside from everyone crawling into VERY deep holes there is not much one could do but enjoy the nice toasty warm feeling just before you started to melt!

[TheBigB]

"Our new theory about the ice age is that it was pretty darn cold. But to be sure, we'll need a few billion dollars more in federal grants."

[Tallguy]

I guess I'd better breakout the lead-lined jockies...

[zook]

According to Anne Elk, it was rather warm when the ice age began, then it became very very cold, then it got warmer near the end.

[isom35]

my only theory about the ice age is that it was very cold for awhile, then it warmed up a little.

[zook]

According to Anne Elk, it was rather warm when the ice age began, then it became very very cold, then it got warmer near the end.

[WIladyconservative]

Now wait just a minute . . . .The scientists' research has led them to believe the long-term effects of gamma-ray bursts would deplete the ozone and cause global cooling and acid rain. . . . .

Didn't we all learn that depleting the ozone layer causes acid rain and GLOBAL WARMING???????

No way - nuh-uh - can't have it both ways!!

[xrp]

Anyone outside when this occurred would be blinded

So...sunglasses wouldn't help.

[Drammach]

Spongebob Squarepants theory..

[VadeRetro]

Gee, this is a badly written article. It doesn't explain well at all how gamma ray bursts cause ice ages, nor does it explain what extinction it is talking about. The date 440 million years ago is not one of the "biggies" normally discussed. Those would be the Permian-Triassic 250 million years ago and the Cretaceous-Tertiary 65 million years ago. Then there was the "Snowball Earth" episode about 700 million years ago. But this is none of those. It apparently refers to the time we started losing a lot of trilobite species.

Not saying it's wrong, just a rather scattershot presentation.

[HangThemHigh]

I guess this means my tin-foil beanie won't help much?

[LibWhacker]

Previous theories have attributed the extinction to the start of an ice age but offer no explanation as to what triggered the ice age during a relatively warm climate.

Those theories -- and this one, too -- have an even higher hurdle to worry about it seems to me; namely, what evidence do they have that there actually was an ice age 440 million years ago? They may have evidence there was a mass extinction. But what evidence do they have that an ice age caused it? As I understand it, not very much at all of the earth's crust from the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction is still around, much less from 440 million years ago.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[night reader]

Researchers now believe a cosmic explosion 440 million years ago may have decimated life on Earth.

The New York Times reports that women and minorities were severely impacted, while Tom Dascle was very concerned and deeply troubled,

[TheJollyRoger]

The gamma-ray burst was caused by global warming. </sarc>

[tubebender]

If you would allow me to detour this thread a bit, can some science type here help me out. Is it prions that were discovered bombarding earth and if I have that right are they the same prions discussed in the Mad Cow hysteria ?

Now back to your regular programing...

[Incorrigible]

[Ichneumon]

Melott said if a gamma-ray burst occurred within 10,000 light years on this side of the galaxy, the effects on Earth would be devastating.

Best candidate for an Earth-fryer:

Eta Carinae is an *extremely* unstable supermassive star 8,000 light years from Earth. 150 years ago it flared up so strongly it reached energy outputs usually only seen in star-destroying supernova explosions (it became one of the brightest stars in the Earthly skies), producing the gigantic "barbell" shaped nebula seen in the photo above.

The cloud is so gigantic (4 *trillion* miles across) that one *pixel* in that image is about the size of our entire solar system. The cloud is expanding at 1.5 million miles per hour. The star itself is that white glow in the middle.

Eta Carinae is one of the most massive stars in our galaxy, and when it eventually lets loose and explodes it it is expected to temporarily outshine the rest of our galaxy combined, and may release enough gamma-ray energy to cause serious (or fatal) problems here on Earth.

And it's so unstable that astronomers have no way of knowing when it might finally "go off" -- every year it undergoes unpredictable fluctuations that might be precursors to the "big one". Note how much it has fluctuated in just this past year:

Radio emissions movie over the past 10 years:

Its final explosion could come at any time. It's always on the edge of going critical.

Sleep well.

[polemikos]

There are more theories than there are scientists. What's up with that?

[Havoc]

Our tax dollars at work. Millions upon billions in grants for a bunch of degreed nutballs to theorize - a fancy word to make guessing sound more palletable.

[U S Army EOD]

So nature has it own neutron bomb.