As the new year dawns, I would like to look back on a pair of stories that received less coverage than they should have during 2013. Although different, each raises profound questions about our future. I don't claim that these are the most important stories, or that nobody noticed them at all — only that we should be paying more attention, and should ponder their implications, both in the year to come and in the decades beyond.
In February, a meteor struck the Earth's atmosphere and exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing more than 1,000 injuries but no deaths. Had it approached at a slightly different angle, the carnage would have been titanic. The explosion should have served as a warning. Instead, the story flashed briefly across the world's consciousness, then vanished. The dissipating of interest is easy to understand: A meteor strike in which nobody dies is "dog bites man," not "man bites dog."
But we should be paying closer attention. In November, the journal Nature published two papers that concluded that impacts of similar meteorites are more frequent than previously thought, and they could do enormous damage should the kinetic energy not be absorbed in the atmosphere.