Weighing up 'cosmic doomsday' risk

I've always been amazed at how scientists can make calculations on subjects like this.

“The bottom line of this is I think you don’t have to lose too much sleep,”

He thinks....?

So the pair took a different approach. For a range of possible rates of cosmic catastrophe, they used data on planetary formation rates to calculate the distribution of birth dates for intelligent species. Combining this with the age of the Earth, they calculate that at most one habitable planet is wiped out every 1.1 billion years.

thats alot of time....

thats alot of time....

haven't we wasted like, 60million years evolving since the dinosaurs, so we only have like... 940million years left... ok forget that. we're pretty safe for a while...

haven't we wasted like, 60million years evolving since the dinosaurs, so we only have like... 940million years left...

.... thats true

.... thats true

haha, well I guess we can sleep easy. well until that astoriod hits us in 2036 (i think)

Combining this with the age of the Earth, they calculate that at most one habitable planet is wiped out every 1.1 billion years

I think that should say that they estimate not calculate. There is no real data for them to work with really but I still wouldn`t be getting worried!