Francesca Lewis Odds

Posted in: news and society in aashiq's Blog

So what are the odds that a 12-year-old US girl could be the sole survivor of a weekend plane crash in Panama that kills the three other passengers? Francesca Lewis beat those odds, whatever they were. Rescue workers struggled for five hours against heavy rains and high-altitude winds to carry Francesca by stretcher from the site of the plane crash of the Cessna 172, which happened Sunday about 430 kilometres west of the capital, Panama City.

What's the odds on something traumatic happening December 21, 2012?

How about the odds or a asteroid striking Mars in January? Here's the Nasa odds!

A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the red planet on January 30, scientists said Thursday. "These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees.

This is no Planet X or Nibiru conspiracy!

Scientists tracking the asteroid, currently halfway between Earth and Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 but increased the chances this week. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid's orbit.

We know that it's going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there's a possibility of an impact. If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.

In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet. "Unlike an Earth impact, we're not afraid, but we're excited," Chesley said.

Al Gore is placing his bets on global warming and so far he's done well with the gamble. More important to most people though is what the odds might be of getting through 2008 without war.