Dr Chatterjee therefore suggests that an object 40km in diameter hit the Earth off the coast of India and forced vast quantities of lava out of the Deccan Traps.

ECONOMIST: Mass extinctions

Just after Discovery's engines fired, launch controllers noticed a small rectangular object drop from the bottom of the ship, carom off an engine bell and vanish into the exhaust flames.

CNN: Victory Lap

The preferred way to deal with rogue asteroids is still a Hollywood-style heroic space mission to knock the object off course, or possibly blow it up although almost surely as an unmanned effort.

ECONOMIST: The American Association for the Advancement of Science

We ran through the process a few more times, tweaking things along the way and running into new issues as we progressed -- like when the demo cube we were printing was knocked off the platform by the Stepstruder itself, or when the nozzle pressed down too hard on an object, which melted at the heat and stuck to the toolhead.

ENGADGET: MakerBot Replicator impressions: the dawning of 3D printers in every home?