I loved this story in the New York Times.

Headline:

“The Bruise Heard Round the World.”

Lede:

IF you’re an astro-geek, this was as good as it gets.

Around the time of the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing last week, an amateur astronomer in Australia detected evidence that a comet had collided with Jupiter, leaving a bruise the size of Earth. This was just days before the longest solar eclipse the world will see this century, in Asia — and in the same summer as a new “Star Trek” movie, no less.

For backyard stargazers, it hasn’t been this delicious since Pluto was demoted from planet status.

A bruise the size of Earth. Yikes!

It was “what seemed to be the biggest planetary collision since 1994, when fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet also collided with Jupiter (hey, with a mass two and a half times greater than all the other planets in the solar system combined, it’s a big target).”

Obvious question in the Times piece:

“Would a blow like this to Earth wipe out civilization?”

Alas,  the piece never provides an answer. So, here’s mine.

Yikes!