What are the chances of a meteor hitting Earth?

Question

What are the chances of a meteor hitting Earth?

Answer 1

Hundreds or possibly thousands of meteors strike the Earth or it's atmosphere every day. These range from dust motes to things the size of tennis balls, all of them are too small to hit the ground as they break up and fall to bits in the air, eventually the stuff drifts down to the ground.

Recently larger objects have hit the ground, there was a car damaged in the USA a few years ago, a dog was killed by a meteorite years ago, and one came though the roof of a house in New Zealand recently and ended up under a table.

Much bigger meteorites slam down every 10 or 50 years. There is a lot of reliable stuff on the net about the Tunguska event in Russia about 100 years ago, and there was a smaller one in Saudia Arabia at "Wabar" possibly in 1861 or so. Both of these would have done a lot of damage to a city if they had hit one. The Tunguska one would have wrecked most of any city it fell in.

Really big ones hit in about every 100 - 300 million years. These basically extinguish most of life on Earth.

Answer 2

There are probably meteors hitting Earth right now. It happens very often but however, not all the meteors that hit Earth are giant rocks. Some are tiny or have been reduced in size by the atmosphere.

Answer 3

The chances of a meteor hitting Earth are 100%, or as near as makes no difference. There must have been dozens of impacts in the last 150 years, recorded as news items. The only ones big enough to make a crater were the Sikhote-Alin impact in Eastern Siberia in 1948, and the Wabar impact in Saudi Arabia in about 1860.

The farther back in history you go, the bigger impacts you can find. The further forward you look into the future, the bigger impacts you can expect.

Answer 4

Every day there are a lot of meteors falling to the earth world wide. In fact thousands every day

they fade away while entering the atmosphere as falling stars
they are very small in size
may be you are expecting a bigger meteor to fall
maybe, just like in the movie

Answer 5

Hitting Earth? Not very high. Entering Earth's atmosphere? 100% chance. Solar systems, like ours, go through phases, and one of those phases is meteoric bombardment. For our system, that phase is over, so the bigger chunks that might hit us have either already hit, or have missed us so many times that it's going to take a while for it to actually hit. What enters our atmosphere is usually leftovers from a comet.

Answer 6

It's hard to tell. There are a lot of meteors out there, and some are headed towards Earth. It's unlikely one will hit us, but scientists have predicted one wil lin the future.

Answer 7

If you are wondering about something that would cause catastrophy, it will be 100 years next year that something from the shy hit Syberia. It caused forest destruction for hundreds of square miles. We were incredibly lucky it hit, an unpopulated area of land. An event that would cause most species of animals to go extinct such as the one that caused the dinosaur extinction, happened but once in the last 250 million years.

Big objects falling out of the sky often explode before hitting ground. In such a case, a crater will not necessarily be created.

Answer 8

Astronomical observations and info from the South Pole
are being kept 'under a blanket of secrecy' as we await
the next big 'hit', but, even if we were to be 'socked' again,
would it matter as far as covering this up, cause you'll be
toast in a matter of several seconds !!!
AS FAR AS TUNGUSKA GOES....millions of trees were
flattened BUT NO CRATER EXISTS; therefore, no impact
was made...SOMETHING exploded from above, whatever
IT was, and no space rock debris was found to be there...

Answer 9

really really high!