The discovery of hundreds of giant comets in the outer solar system over the last two decades means that these objects pose a much greater hazard to life than asteroids.Because they are so distant from  Earth, Centaurs appear as pinpricks of light in even the largest telescopes. Saturn's 200 kilometer moon Phoebe, depicted in this image, seems likely to be a Centaur that was captured by that planet's gravity at some time in the past. Until ...

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The discovery of hundreds of giant comets in the outer solar system over the last two decades means that these objects pose a much greater hazard to life than asteroids.

Authors Bio:
Born in Long Island public school year in Sweden as exchange student, went to Harvard one year, Cooper Union in NYC as Art student. Have two children, one of whom is rock mogul, the other has three daughters, one of whom has two daughters, making me a great grandmother at 68, very proud. For twenty years I operated a private primary school, Orchard School, in Santa Cruz CA. Still going strong but I'm retired and write much of the time. Strong believer in the space program and our subconscious quest as a species to prevent celestial onslaughts of one kind and another, for which it is my conviction that we have developed nuclear power, though we've had to use false wars to do so; in the end I believe we'll redeem ourselves in this way, which is why I find the abandonment of the shuttle program so sad. The Russians will do the honors with the next menace from Heaven, or have said that they will. In any case, nothing matters much if we don't, not the debt ceiling, pollution, nothing. All moot.