Extinction of Mankind by Meteorite?

Question

Our atmosphere and O-Zone Layer which normally protects us from asteroids and meteorites is dying..
Our atmosphere was not strong enough to stop the asteroid which abolished the dinosaur's and now its much weaker..
Could our extinction come from a huge asteroid?

Answer 1

The atmosphere is NOT weaker now. The ozone layer has nothing at all to do with stopping meteors, only with filtering ultraviolet light out of sunlight.

But, yes, a large enough asteroid could make humans go extinct. Maybe. But recall that it was the extinction of the dinosaurs that allowed mammals to take over Earth. So the mammals survived that asteroid. And humans are mammals. And we have technology that was not available to the early mammals. So I would think it would take an even bigger asteroid to kill off the human race. And there is no asteroid that large in an Earth crossing orbit. All the really big ones have no chance of hitting Earth. So even though asteroids big enough to cause the collapse of civilization might hit, I doubt that an extinction event size impact is even possible.

Answer 2

Imagine the world as an apple. An asteroid is a bullet fired from a highpowered rifle. The skin of the apple at that scale would represent our atmosphere. Think it would be able to whitstand the bullet? The atmosphere has never protected us from asteroids. Nor has the ozone layer, which is just a thin layer in the atmosphere. The atmosphere can only stop pebble sized rocks. Maybe golfballs. Sometimes the atmosphere can make bigger objects heat up so much that they explode, like a popcorn, before they reach the surface but the debris will still reach earth, albeit in smaller pieces. So we are not safe and we never have been.

Earth has been struck many many times. Infact earth has been struck about 10 times as much as the moon, which is absolutely pockmarked from eons of impacts. The only reason earth isn´t as riddled with craters as the moon is because earth is geologically and hydrologically alive. Tectonic motion and erosion, mostly from water, erases the traces of even the largest impacts. Only small and recent craters remain.

And it wouldn´t take a huge asteroid to kill off humanity either. It would only take the impact of a rock a couple of hundred meters in diameter (or a really massive volcanic eruption) because we wouldn´t be able to cope with the consequences. A dust plume that blocks out the sun for a year or two would cause global cropfailures. 800 million people, the ones that are constantly on the edge of death from starvation, would be pushed over the edge as their already scarce food supply would vanish. What would 800 million people do when facing starvation? Just about anything they could to survive. So while earth and nature would hardly notice the effects of an impact humanity, with its fragile and unsustainable way of life, would suffer the consquences of its severe overpopulation.

Sleep well tonight...

Answer 3

yes and if you look back at the dinosaurs there is a huge hole in the gulf were a asteroid could have impacted and since our atmosphere is weaker than it was in the prehistoric times we are very vulnerable to an asteroid destroying man kind as we know it.

Answer 4

This is one of the many psychological advantages that theists have over nonbelievers.
As a believer, I know that God created the earth to be inhabited, and He will not let mankind go extinct.
This may brings smiles to the worldy-wise, but remember: He who gave us calculus and the physics that enabled us to reach the Moon, Sir Isaac Newton, was a theist.