what are the odds?

Question

what are the odds of metors hitting the earth? Can it happen soon? please anything you know would be great.

Answer 1

As noted by others meteors enter the earth's atmosphere all the time. But, you are referring to meteors large enough to cause catastrophe. Below are links to news and speculation on this subject. The last link allows you to input data such as size and composition of a meteor to get a level of destruction that would likely be caused. What a meteor is made of (solid rock, or aggregate) determines some of the destruction it could cause. For more articles search "meteor impacts" and "meteors hitting earth."

Answer 2

Meteorites hit the Earth several times a day. Most are small and have no major effects are anything. Most burn up in the atmosphere before they reach Earth. The odds of a meteor of any substantial size hitting the Earth any time soon is actually anybodies guess.

Answer 3

Meteors fly towards the Earth all the time. Most of them burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. The ones that don't are usually made of a dense rocky material such as granite or metals such as iron and nickle. When they actually land upon the surface of the Earth they are called "Meteorites."

We have several meteor showers each year and some of them are truly spectacular. Watch for events like this in the news sections of these two web sites:

www.astromart.com
www.cloudynights.com

Answer 4

Odds are 100% certainty.

Most are small and burn up in the atmosphere. Some don't. Some are big enough to destroy areas the size of a city or state, others have caused mass extinctions.

I encourage you to read about the Tunguska incident in 1908; we're about due for that to happen again.

KEEP STUDYING SCIENCE! George W. Bush is a lousy failure of a President - he hates science!

Answer 5

Meteors hit Earth all the time, but the atmosphere is usually enough to slow them down, and most burn before they hit the ground. It's a very likely possibility that a large meteor could hit Earth and the ground, but the likelihood that it will do any damage is very little.

Answer 6

Meteorites are constantly hitting the Earth, about 1000 tons a day on average. Ones large enough to destroy cities hit about once a century, but are more likely to fall into the ocean than the land.

Answer 7

Small meteors hit all the time.

A locally damaging impact (about equal to a small nuke) probably happens on average once in a thousand years. The last one happened about 100 years ago in Siberia. Most of them probably happen over the ocean, because it accounts for most of Earth's surface area.

Impacts on the scale of the one that killed off the dinosaurs probably happen about once every 100 million years. It's unlikely one will happen in the forseeable future.

Answer 8

The odds are low, otherwise we wouldn´t be writing and having internet exchanges.

but the fact is
1. This asteroids are real, there are thousand out there.
2. The observatories want to map them all to have their position at every moment
3. There is a lack of funding for this projects.

Want to help?
Write your senator, congressman, newspaper to provide more funds to this observatories. Ask that something be done.

Answer 9

large dangerous ones most likely break up on their way to the ground and scatter. Some big ones do hit...

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/images/meteorcrater.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060601174729.htm

Answer 10

you can study them here; Nasa near earth programs

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/


As you will see there are a good many out there in this link;


http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/neofact.html