{"id":439,"date":"2013-02-15T08:38:47","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T14:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=439"},"modified":"2013-02-15T08:38:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T14:38:47","slug":"meteorites-and-skepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/02\/15\/meteorites-and-skepticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Meteorites and Skepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you haven’t heard, a meteorite came down in the Urals this morning (their time).\u00a0 According to the information I’ve seen, it massed about 10 tons and was traveling about 54,000 km\/h.\u00a0 Roughly speaking, it would have had the equivalent energy of about 1 Megaton of TNT.<\/p>\n

Again, according to reports, several 700 people were injured, mostly from flying glass and building damage.<\/p>\n

Honestly, this is a pretty epic event.\u00a0 A tiny little meteor almost landed in a town.\u00a0 Considering the size of the Earth and the amount of towns, it’s pretty rare.<\/p>\n

The thing is, there are lots and lots of reports coming out about this. We, as consumers of information, must be careful, especially when (as I am) we forward the information in a blog or article.\u00a0 A major event like this can be good for blog hits, especially if people think that they have a scoop or something.<\/p>\n

For example, at least one site is saying that this is the crater from today’s meteor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It’s not.\u00a0 This is another very interesting thing about the Earth<\/a>.\u00a0 It was a gas mine in Turkmenistan that collapsed.\u00a0 Because the natural gas was leaking, the engineers and geologists decided to burn the gas.\u00a0 It’s been burning ever since.\u00a0 Oh, the fire was started in 1971.\u00a0 Nothing to do with a meteor.<\/p>\n

Oh… and this is NOT an alien invasion.\u00a0 There are no pods with transformers in them.\u00a0 Sorry.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when you are consuming information, any information.\u00a0 Consider the source.\u00a0 How well do you know the writers?\u00a0 Do the sources look good?\u00a0 Is it sensationalized or factual?<\/p>\n

Be a skeptical consumer of information.\u00a0 The world is a fascinating place… but people try to make it more than it is, generally in the name of a scoop or a few bucks.<\/p>\n

As far as my information, I generally look to Phil Plait for stuff like this<\/a>.\u00a0 I know he’s not going to go the sensationalist route. There are some great videos on his report too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you haven’t heard, a meteorite came down in the Urals this morning (their time).\u00a0 According to the information…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[284,15,285],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-skepticism","tag-russia-meteorite","tag-skepticism-2","tag-source-of-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}