The chances of being killed in an asteroid impact shouldn't keep you up at night.
Fortunately, a relatively big rock, one about the size of an American football field that would be able to cause severe local damage upon impact, hits Earth only every 2,000 years or so, according to NASA.First off, the question isn't whether an asteroid will smash into the Earth: Not only has it happened before, but it happens pretty routinely. once a year
, according to NASA, but objects of that size burn up in the atmosphere and explode well before they hit the ground. When this occurs, no one really notices, except perhaps to think that the spectacle is really cool, since these rocks cause what we call— the"shooting stars" we enjoy watching on a dark, clear night. Meteors are produced by meteoroids, which are the actual pieces of asteroid that are burning up. The vast majority of meteoroids are fractions of an inch or a few millimeters across.
Larger objects can fall to Earth's surface as meteorites. Only one person is known to have been injured directly by a meteorite — a certain Ann Hodges, who had aOnce in a while, meteoroids are large enough to get deep in the Earth's atmosphere and explode; these objects are called bolides or fireballs.
Consider the most recent larger impacts. In 1908, a large asteroid or comet exploded over Siberia, triggering shock waves that
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