JPL rocks our world

When I was researching all the ways cosmic catastrophes could wipe us out for my book, I was a little overwhelmed at the sheer number of such potential hazards. Gamma-ray bursts, roaming black holes, galactic dust clouds waiting in the dark to enshroud the Sun, and so on. But these are extremely rare and unlikely ways for us to go, and not worth worrying about. But then there's the impact threat. Sure, the chances of civilization (or even a single human) being sent off to the Great Asteroid Belt in the Sky are very low, but they're not zero, and they're high enough that we should be looking into this threat. And astronomers do. There are observatories (though not enough IMO) dedicated to scanning the skies for incoming rocks, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California is one place where they take this seriously. In fact, they've created The ...