How long untill the earth gets smacked by and asstoeroid ?

Question

a very large one.
And please let me right under it. Because after that. Its going to be ugly.

Answer 1

we will be the last to know.

Answer 2

It could happen any time! The threat is real and there are several agencies whose mission is to discover asteroids, comets, etc that might be on a collision course with Earth like LINEAR and NEAT. All the time they and others are discovering new comets and asteroids and figuring their trajectories. Occasionally one will just seemingly appear out of nowhere and surprise us. Only a week or so ago a rather large asteroid passed between the Earth and the Moon- that's a "very near miss". The reason not many folks heard about it is because it was only discovered less than a month before its pass. Problem is that if we thought we might try to intercept and destroy or divert a comet or asteroid from hitting us we need several years of preparation to even be able to intercept the thing. A real bummer if we only discover it a month or even a year before the collision.

Answer 3

1908 Tunguska event, Siberia

A ~50 m chunk of cometary material exploded over the Stony Tunguska River of Siberia, Russia, with damage the equivalent of 600 Hiroshima-size nuclear bombs, without creating any crater, leveling trees for miles around in the Siberian forest, with a blast felt hundreds of miles away.

1972, Earth atmosphere

An asteroid 100 m across actually dipped into Earth's atmosphere, creating a spectacular fireball, but 'skipped' back into space.


1989 An asteroid 800 m in diameter crossed Earth orbit just 6 hours before Earth would be in that same place.


2002, 1/3 distance to Moon

NASA reported that a soccer field-sized asteroid missed earth by about 75,000 miles in June 2002. It was discovered slightly after closest approach.


2029 near miss

99942 Apophis will pass within 4 Earth radii of the Earth's center. Scientists tell people not to worry.


2036 possible impact

After analyzing new data, scientists have now predicted that there is a slim chance 99942 Apophis will pass through a "gravitational keyhole" approximately 400m across, which could cause the asteroid to hit earth in April 2036.

Answer 4

It has been theorized that our galaxy wobbles somewhat like the earth, tilting in and out of the average plain. For analogy, think of a spinning top that slowly wobbles.

Anyhow, the theory suggests that the large meteor encounters are caused by us shifting out of the normal plain and out with a frequency of about every 65 million years. Which coincidently when the last big one hit. Dating back it is believed that every 65 million years we get a big one, so it is possible that we are now due for another large impact.

Currently there is no approach to deflecting a potential impact. Depending on the material there are several different ideas, but most of them would take years to allow enough of a shift of orbit to prevent an impact. But spotting one with only a few months to react would be impossible to prevent impact. Nevertheless, I'd hope that we'd try anyway.

Answer 5

Go http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/
Very little risk currently.
Very Very little.
If you ask how long will there be a big and definite one, it is uncertainty as there are too many gravitational pulls. It is too far in the future, don't worry.

Answer 6

the discovery channel has a program on asteroids, and the eggheads on there say we`ll know when it comes blazing in for asstoeroid , don`t they make a cream for that ?

Answer 7

Hopefully not any time soon!!!

Answer 8

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