NASA to conspiracy theory: Drop Dead

NASA to the Internet: Comet Elenin will not kill us all. (Via Louie Baur)

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: Conspiracy • Myth Universe • Science • Space

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PhosPhorious

Just those of us found unworthy.
http://www.raingod.com/ angusm

They _would_ say that, wouldn’t they?

I don’t believe anything until I hear the government deny it.
Mister44

So… so I should stop my murderous rampage of revenge?
http://twitter.com/RDarkstorm Amy M. Cossano

zOMG! We all gunna DIE!!1 *kills self*

Which is what you should do if you buy into that bs.
Brainspore

Oh, for heaven’s gate.
Blaze Curry

Well…if its a comet, then it probably won’t kill us all. After all, its a big ball of ice and loose rocks, right? more than likely without a direct hit it would break up in the upper atmo and turn into a great cloud, blocking sunlight for decades…

Or just vaporize.
elix

*spraypaints “DUH” across his monitor in huge orange letters*
Chuck

So how is it that the conspiracy theorists know about my comet attractor ray, but NASA doesn’t?
Fionnbharr

I miss Art Bell.
Douglas Rushkoff

I think of him whenever one of these stories comes around. He was the best. He and Gene Shepard shaped so many of our minds.

He still does the occasional broadcast but I never manage to catch it. Is there a “clock radio” recording application out there? Like TiVo for radio? Something that would, say, open up itunes or a browser and record a web broadcast at a certain time?
- http://twitter.com/enkiv2 John Ohno
  
  There’s an application for linux called podget that’s supposed to do this, but if it’s being broadcast over a shoutcast server or something that won’t work. You’d probably have to schedule a player to run and dump the audio (using cron and mplayer will do this easily for periodically repeating schedules, for values of ‘easily’ that include reading the mplayer and cron manpages and finding the right options).
Antinous / Moderator

NASA has entirely failed to address the issue of the comet generating a deadly miasma.
- elix
  
  I would link you to NASA’s press release about comet-based miasma (namely, disproving the Pern String theory), but I’m afraid I can’t see much behind all this orange paint. ;)
- boo
  
  But they were so bored already…
- flosofl
  
  Or the whole “It’s really a spaceship for three space vampires.”
  - elix
    
    Everyone knows it’s the space capsule for Disco Robot Jesus. The rapture and all, hel-LO.
Boomer

Deadly miasma: when the cedars bloom in Texas.
Bucket

Meh. Not worried about it. Any time there’s a comet about to wipe out all life a plucky group of adventurers always seems to save the day.

Just so long as there Chocobos to ride into battle the earth will be safe…. oh, crap.
- http://twitter.com/enkiv2 John Ohno
  
  The great thing about apocalypses is that when they work right nobody is around to complain about them. It’s only when they malfunction (and we get a plucky bunch of survivors who just happened to be in a cave deep under the antarctic polar ice cap when the bomb went off) that the apocalypse is something to have worried about (retroactively).
fnc

Thundarr the Barbarian was NOT a documentary.
majutsushi

As long as they don’t change the name to ‘Melancholia’ …
http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

NASA can’t take us to the moon anymore, but they can argue on the internet. Good times!