Stephanie Murray's comments show lack of general scientific awareness

Are the students of this university that unknowledgeable in science? M. Stephanie Murray's article "The sky is falling, so duck already" (Wednesday) leads me to believe that we need to emphasize science a bit more in grade school. I don't know if it was her astute statement "We've got one hell of an atmosphere, kids. It does some nasty friction stuff to those pesky space invaders." Or if it was perhaps the fact that Ms. Murray asserted that "unless a really sneaky one figures out how to duck through the hole in the ozone." I believe that it was her conclusion to the last statement "Isn't this common knowledge?" that leads me to this thought. Yes, we have a hole in the ozone layer, but it is not the entire atmosphere that is gone, just a lack of ozone.

Also, asteroids are a big thing to worry about, after all what was it you think killed the dinosaurs? The evidence is there that a 10-kilometer to 20-kilometer- (6.21 to 12.43 mile) wide asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. For dramatic evidence of this, one merely needs to see Meteor Crater in Northern Arizona, which was caused by a 30-meter- (98.43 foot) wide metallic asteroid.

Rocky asteroids from 100 meters (328.08 feet) up will make it through the atmosphere, and there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. Our atmosphere is good, but it can only stop up to a certain size, and then what? Should we ignore the threat from those "pesky space invaders" or shall we do something about it?

By Geoffrey McStroul (letter)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 6, 1997