The human appetite for apocalyptic scenarios is apparently inexhaustible. Doomsayers, whether they base their stories in religion or science, or simply make them up whole cloth, never lack for a sizable audience. People thrill to tales of Noah's flood, or the Second Coming, or thermonuclear warfare, or the "dinosaur killer" asteroid, or the submergence of Florida beneath a rising sea, or Al Qaeda's nuke, or..., the great bird flu epidemic, or..., well, the list goes on and on. Here's the latest:
Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere. Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.
Read it here.
I'd been reading hints about this scenario for several months now. At last it is being presented in a formal setting, a paper at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Association, where it can be subject to full critical appraisal. At present it is nothing but a suggestive and highly questionable proposition.
That won't matter to the journalists and TV production crews, though. Expect them to plough full ahead with dramatic re-enactments.
