|
Posted by David Williams on September 9, 2005, 11:06 am
Please log in for more thread options
-> >> Impact, are rarer still, only hitting once every 150 million years or
-> >> so. So I don't loose sleep over it, but you're still more likely to be
-> >> killed by a comet than to win the jackpot at Lotto."
-> >
-> > Surely if that were so, then there'd be a whole bunch of people every week
-> > killed by meteorites? I can't remember the last time I heard of anyone
-> > killed by a meteorite. But I can say with certainty that there must have
-> > been 100s of 1000s of lotto winners over the years....
-> >
-> He means the chances of one particular person winning the lotto,
-> not the chances of anybody winning--big difference.
It's plausible that *on average* 100s or 1000s of people are killed
every few decades by comets. The fact that none have been killed
recently may be just good luck. When a comet hits, it can kill millions
or even billions of people. The impacts can be very rare, and still
produce an *average* casualty rate that is higher than the rate of
Lotto jackpot winners.
dow
| 
XML Sitemap