[www.indystar.com]

... I take issue with some of their numbers. They quote as a source, the AP, for saying the chance of the Earth getting destroyed by an asteroid is 1 in 700,000. That seems wayyyy too high for me.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

Why worry about it? there is nothing you can do about it.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

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Ombligo
Why worry about it? there is nothing you can do about it.

I think maybe PeterB is more concerned about the potential inaccuracy in reporting than the actual event. No solution to the latter, but the former could be addressed by doing some research and requesting a correction be made.

Don't statistics like this need a term? Is it a 1:88,000 chance over 1 million years? Over a year? Every day? In a lifetime?

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C(-)ris
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Their 1 in 700,000 number does indeed seem fishy. Looks like the source is an old blog post from astronomer Phil Plait / an estimate from Alan Harris, where the number was given as 1 in 700,000 -- but NOT for the Earth getting destroyed by an asteroid, rather your lifetime chance of getting killed by an asteroid impact. Very definitely NOT the same thing!

[web.archive.org]

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)