I certainly hope not, a large asteroid could render Earth unliveable.
Rocks are always entering earth's atmosphere, most of them burn up before hitting the ground, and most of us have seen these in the form of shooting stars.
They are not really shooting stars just a rock moving extremely fast that is burning very brightly as it melts away. Earth has definitely been struck by asteroids before as we can clearly see the evidence all over the globe such as this crater in Arizona. When an asteroid or a meteoroid have hit earth they are then called meteorites.
Meteor Crater,...
Jim Wark
Buy This at Allposters.com
Jim Wark
Buy This at Allposters.com
Apparently the asteroid called 99942 Apophis won't hit the Earth in 2036 after some further calculations were made.
This asteroid apparently had a 2.7% chance of hitting earth which seems like small odds but we have a lot less chance of winning the lottery.
In fact even if there was a chance of finding an object that would hit earth in our lifetimes we have ever increasingly sophisticated tracking methods,which would give us well and truly enough time to do something about it.
According to NASA there is only 1 in 1000 chance that we will discover an object that will hit earth in the next hundred years. Furthermore there is only 1 in 10,000 chance of finding an asteroid that will impact earth in the next 10 years.
An asteroid less than 100 metres (328 feet) in diameter would mostly burn up in the atmosphere.
Asteroids 100 metres (328 feet) and larger would cause local devastation, leaving a sizable crater.
The really scary asteroids 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) and more in diameter could cause extinction level events such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs.
It really doesn't seem like something we should be worried about.
If you want to learn more about the groups that are watching and tracking these civilization destroyers then have a look through the links below.
Near Earth Asteroid Tracking
Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards
Spacewatch
If you are interested in finding some significant impact craters on earth check out this list on Wikipedia. This list tells you how old they are, the name and the coordinates, so you can actually go find them if you want. I would start with Google earth.
List of impact craters on Earth
Want your own piece of Meteorite?
Very nice blog and I do hope the earth is never hit by a ig space rock too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Armand I am glad you liked it. I also hope we are not hit by a big asteroid, I think we should be ok though.
ReplyDelete