What are the chances of being hit by an asteroid?

Question

I would like to know what the chances are that the Earth will be hit by an asteroid.

Answer 1

Apophis is estimated to have a 1 in 300 chance of impact in the Year 2036 with a near miss in 2029. 1950DA will hit 877 years from now. the scary ones are the ones not mapped or coming from behind the Sun, in which case we'll only have 2yrs advance warning.

We need at least 10 years advanced notice in order to launch an interdiction rocket, or whatever to nudge it out of its orbit.

Answer 2

Here's web site you might like to keep an eye on
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/intro_impact.cfm

and here's their response to the question will an asteroid impact the earth?:

Not that we know of! None of the asteroids or comets discovered so far is on a collision course with Earth. However, we can't speak for those that are not yet discovered. In principle, one of those could hit any time, but statistically the chances are very small. Click here for background information on the impact hazard and what we are doing about it

Answer 3

The first thing to remember is that space is big and empty. Which makes the chance that we will be hit by anything from space very small. In much of space, for example, large-sized objects are hundreds or thousands of light years apart. Even the asteroid belt has so much space in it, that we can send space probes through it without any problems. The asteroids in the belt are spread over a ring that is more than a billion kilometers in circumference, more than 100 million kilometers wide, and millions of kilometers thick.

Here's what JPL's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking team has to say:

"The most dangerous asteroids, capable of a global disaster, are extremely rare. The threshold size is believed to be 1/2 to 1 km. These bodies impact the Earth only once every 1,000 centuries on average. Comets in this size range are thought to impact even less frequently, perhaps once every 5,000 centuries or so."
The Asteroid and Impact Hazard page says:


"The threshold for an impact that causes widespread global mortality and threatens civilization almost certainly lies between about 0.5 and 5 km diameter, perhaps near 2 km. Impacts of objects this large occur from one to several times per million years.
"Because the risk of such an impact happening in the near future is very low, the nature of the impact hazard is unique in our experience. Nearly all hazards we face in life actually happen to someone we know, or we learn about them from the media, whereas no large impact has taken place within the total span of human history... It is this juxtaposition of the small probability of occurrence balanced against the enormous consequences if it does happen that makes the impact hazard such a difficult and controversial topic."

This is a difficult issue because an impact would pose enormous risk, yet because the odds of it occurring within our lifetimes is so low, it is unnecessary to run around believing that the sky is falling. There are two things to consider: one is that there are many organizations with telescopes trained to the sky, watching and tracking asteroids and comets, compiling a list of potentially hazardous objects to keep an eye on. Many of these objects are decades away from approaching the Earth which gives us a lot of time to track them in order to accurately predict their orbits.

Answer 4

The equation would be number of asteroids that actually hit the earth divided by square feet of the earth divided by number of people on the earth that are located in an area where an asteroid could actually hit them (outside, or in a structure that an asteroid could crash through). Impossible to calculate, but probably about one in a quadrillion or one in a quintillion.

Answer 5

think of how big the universe is and how small we are.... what are the chances of an asteroid hitting earth really? chances will be like 1 to 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.....

Answer 6

earth keeps getting hit by asteroids all the time

Answer 7

What size of asteroid? We get hit by small rocks all the time, but almost all of them burn up before they hit the ground. Basically, the bigger the rock, the less chance of getting hit by it.

Answer 8

25

Answer 9

1 in 3 billion

Answer 10

2035- 1 out of 15000 chance
2105- 1 out of 160000 chance
29th century- currently believed to be 100% chance