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On page 62 of David Deutsch's excellent The Beginning of Infinity he writes:

a typical child born in the United States today is more likely to die as a result of an astronomical event than a car accident

According to the National Safety Council the lifetime probability of dying in a motor vehicle accident is huge: over 1%, and by far the largest of the non-intentional non health related causes. Is the lifetime chance of dying from an astronomical event greater than that?

Sklivvz
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orome
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  • Or his he referring to the UK, where the odds are about a third of those in the US. (http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/trasnsportpop.html) –  Nov 05 '11 at 13:23
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    Or could it be that "astronomical event" includes things like coronal mass ejections (books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507#description) and even skin cancers? –  Nov 05 '11 at 20:40
  • Wikipedia says that about 30,000 people die each year in the USA from road accidents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year. – Jase Nov 30 '12 at 13:39

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Here's what the book's website says:

Correction: That should read "an aeroplane accident". A true comparison with airplane accidents appears on p207, using slightly different statistics.

Note: The probability of dying in a car accident is at least 12 times and perhaps as much as 100 times as great as that of dying from an astronomical event. As road safety improves, this will presumably continue to fall rapidly during the lifetimes of children born today -- but then, so will the probability of dying from an astronomical event.

So it is, in fact, an error.

Oddthinking
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    and even that seems extremely fishy as aircraft accidents are exceedingly rare (far more so than are fatal car crashes), especially ones involving Americans (most of them happen in areas Americans don't tend to travel in large numbers, like 3rd world countries). – jwenting Nov 07 '11 at 13:22
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    If you spend as much time flying as you do driving, then [both activities are almost equally dangerous](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5581/are-airplanes-the-safest-mode-of-transportation/5582#5582). – ESultanik Nov 07 '11 at 14:47
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    @jwenting: doesn't that rareness make it *less* fishy that another improbable event (astronomical event) is more likely? – Oddthinking Nov 07 '11 at 15:17
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    I think the comparison is if you are in an airplane accident you are likely to die in X% of them. Where as you are likely to die in Y% of automobile accidents. And X% > Y%. So apples are not as juicy as oranges. – Chad Nov 07 '11 at 15:43
  • @Chad: No, no one is talking about that. The model here is the probability that a random person will die in a plane accident, which is extremely low because there are not a lot of plane crashes a day. However, this does not in itself mean that flying is a safer mode a transportation than driving, because there are many more people driving than flying. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Nov 07 '11 at 19:04
  • @Oddthinking they claim getting killed in a car crash (relatively common) is less likely than getting killed in a plane crash (relatively uncommon). Sounds fishy to me, unless as Esultanik points out they take the number of deaths per passenger/mile or passenger/hour in which case it might be true when taking light aircraft (so small Cessnas etc. which have a higher accident and fatality rate) into account. – jwenting Nov 08 '11 at 07:11
  • @jwenting: I agree that doesn't sound right, but my reading is the author didn't say that. He said: "astronomical death > car death. Oh, oopsie! I meant astronomical death > air death! Car death >> astronomical death." – Oddthinking Nov 08 '11 at 11:49
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    @Oddthinking that sounds more plausible. – jwenting Nov 09 '11 at 08:31
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According to Bad Astronomy, astronomer Alan Harris estimates that the probability of dying due to an asteroid is about 1 in 700,000.

As for other forms of astronomical events, one could hypothesize that non-Earth based radiation could cause deaths in the form of cancer, but that would likely be quite difficult to deduce, unless that person was an astronaut, which is pretty low.

Bottom line is, I think it's pretty unlikely to occur, much lower than the probability of dying in a car accident.

PearsonArtPhoto
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    So (according to that estimate) a car is about 8,000 times more likely to kill you. –  Nov 05 '11 at 15:03
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    All cars as a whole. Not some [particular homicidal car](http://www.amazon.com/Christine-Signet-Stephen-King/dp/0451160444). :) –  Nov 05 '11 at 17:28
  • Could "astronomical event" be more broadly defined than just asteroids (see comment above)? –  Nov 05 '11 at 20:03
  • I mentioned radiation, but while some statistics can be made, it's hard to say a person got cancer because of radiation, or because of some other factor. It can be said that someone got cancer because of radiation, but not a particular person... – PearsonArtPhoto Nov 05 '11 at 20:53
  • That stat seems quite high considering noone has ever been killed by asteroid –  Nov 05 '11 at 22:02
  • This turns out to be an error (see my CW answer); however the question remains one an interesting one (since the error is widely published) and this answer addresses it best, so I'm keeping it (unless the CW answer gets more votes). –  Nov 05 '11 at 22:30
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    @Jonathan. Tell that to the dinosaurs. – LarsTech Nov 06 '11 at 17:45
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    @larsTech thankfully that was an anomaly :) –  Nov 06 '11 at 23:12
  • @LarsTech: very nearly every single dinosaur that ever lived, didn't die of an astronomical event. But some large proportion of the ones alive on that day did. The exceptions being those who died of something else before being starved out as an indirect consequence of impact. Even the individuals whose lineages survived, such as birds, I guess you might still say a lot of them died due to the event (after reproducing), since the impact cause such massive changes to so many environments. But 160 million years of dinosaurs before them died of car accidents something else :-) – Steve Jessop May 15 '15 at 10:56
  • ... so, these calculations always end up being "what proportion of deaths are due to car accidents as opposed to all other causes" vs. "what's the probability of an extinction-level event in the next 70 or so years". As you imply, we don't calculate the latter by looking only at human history, so the number of humans killed by asteroids to date doesn't really matter. – Steve Jessop May 15 '15 at 11:01
  • It’s not cancer that you have to worry about from astronomical radiation, which wouldn’t penetrate deep into the atmosphere, it’s the destruction of the ozone layer and consequent collapse of the ecosystem. A gamma ray burst in our direction would do it. So would a nearby supernova, but there are any candidate stars close enough to do that kind of damage. – Mike Scott Jul 01 '19 at 14:19
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To give an answer to this question we must first ask ourselves what we are comparing to what. If we are comparing events occurred in the last 50 years then you might be right to say that the chance is quite low for us to dye from an astronomical event than say a car accident.

All depends on the statistical sample you are considering. The statement that you are trying to understand is based on much bigger statistical sample going back to the history of all earth. If you estimate the amount of fatal car accidents or calculate the fatal accidents involving a passenger jet and compare this with the number of catastrophic astronomical events occurred during the existence of earth you will reach to the same conclusion that you are questioning.

For proper explanation I suggest you visit http://star.arm.ac.uk/impact-hazard/ address and follow the links to the specific presentations and documents.

Tigran Khanzadyan
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    You are arguing that the intention of the author was "Over all of human history, more people have died from astronomical events than car accidents." However, the author clearly states that he is referring to "a typical child born in the United States today". I suggest your interpretation is not tenable given this wording. – Oddthinking Nov 07 '11 at 00:40
  • OK, this is quickly getting into mode of forum. To be precise I'm not arguing about one or the other point. I'm simply stating a fact that if you are talking about "a chance" of this or that you have to bare in mind also the statistical sample over which you are calculating the chance. The point is although the astronomical events are rare but they are more devastating than the car accident. I really urge you to follow the links and read the background of this all story. And why was this question migrated to skeptics? – Tigran Khanzadyan Nov 07 '11 at 14:48
  • I am sorry if I have misinterpreted your point. I'm not sure why the Astronomer mods felt it didn't fit their format, but it does fit ours. Part of that is we generally like people to extract and summarise the key parts of their references, to protect against link rot and to make their arguments clearer. In this case, I am still at loss as to why the original claim isn't sufficient to specify the predicted range of risk. I am inviting you to clarify that for everyone in your answer. – Oddthinking Nov 07 '11 at 15:05