• Question: If a meteor hit earth what would happen?

    Asked by the joeff to William, Roberto, Karen, Jasmine, Chinna on 12 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: William

      William answered on 12 Nov 2018:


      It is estimated that between 36 and 166 meteorites larger than 10 grams fall to Earth per million square kilometers per year. Over the whole surface area of Earth, that means that 18,000 to 84,000 meteorites bigger than 10 grams hit per year. Most meteorites are too small to actually fall all the way to the surface as they get burnt up in the atmosphere. If a big enough one hit the earth it could cause an extinction event like the one that caused the dinosaurs to become extinct. These would have to be really big… so for example the last known impact of an object of 10 km or more in diameter was at the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. 🙂

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