Marginal Revolution, Asteroid impacts are always a favorite example of a high-impact, low-likelihood event. Now, thanks to Tyler Cowen at I now know that we have been significantly understating asteroid impact risk:

Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to one million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.

I wonder what this has done to the price of catastrophic asteroid impact insurance.