I see 'falling stars' all the time. What are the chances that we get hit by one that could destroy u?

Question

how could one destroy US?!

Answer 1

Yeah, they're not really stars or pieces of stars, that's just a name that got stuck to them before people knew what they were.  The typical 'falling star' is a rock smaller than a piece of gravel, down to about the size of a grain of sand.  They get really hot as they fall through the atmosphere and glow, and you see that.  They mostly burn up long before they hit the ground, sometimes they hit but have slowed down to the point they do no damage.  Very occasionally they actually hit with significant force and do damage.

This graph shows how common various sized impacts are:

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/ast...

Answer 2

Every star has its own orbit. It most likely not happened anything like such would happen within million of years.

But scientists have always survilliance these activities.

When a star is burned out, their fractures burst out everywhere. The falling stars that you`re mentioning above are the remains and fractures of the star that shooting out burning furiously.

If they hit on the earth, the big ones will left big holes in the earth.

Answer 3

dont worry, those all get burned up in the earth's atmosphere befor they hit the earth

Answer 4

The nearest star is 4.2 light years away.  That's FAR!!!  I highly doubt  we will ever get "hit by a star".  What you are probably seeing is a meteor.  All that is is broken up parts of a meteoroid that enter the atmosphere.  Most of the debris burn up in the atmosphere but some do reach earth.  The ones that reach earth are small though.

Answer 5

jeez, people!  the questioner clearly doesn't mistake meteorites for stars, the term 'falling stars' (it's even in quotes) has been commonly used to mean meteorites for decades.

The ref sites may be of interest, altho' you are just as clearly asking about a catastrophic hit that might do more than knock you off your feet.

Curiously, I have always thought 2 or 3 people total in modern times had been hit, and authorities were reasonably sure it was a rowdy rock from outer space that dun the durty deed.  But it seems it's not so uncommon.

Answer 6

The chances are ... well ... non-zero.  We *will* be hit by unpleasantly large  meteoroids.  We don't know when, but we do have an idea of the average frequency of collisions of varying destructiveness.  We probably know about all the ones which are orbiting the sun near the earth's orbit, and which would cause destruction on the order of wiping out a city.  Ones which are large enough to be a threat to the survival of our species only hit us once every several tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years.  Still this does not mean that we won't be hit by one in the next year -- or we could go half a billion years before being hit by another one.

We have become very good at predicting where these near-earth objects are going.  The best odds of getting hit for the rest of this century are about 1 in 40,000.  And that would be a city-killer, not an extinction event.

Edit: "falling stars" are meteors, or meteoroids burning up as they speed into our atmosphere.  They are small rocky objects and do not come from stars.  Our solar system is loaded with them.  Most of the ones you see causing the bright streaks across the sky are smaller than a golf ball.

Answer 7

There are two known cases of people being hit by meteorites. One of them lived in Alabama. The other in England.

A third person had a near miss. She was sleeping on her couch when a meteorite crashed through her roof and than through the floor beside where she was lying down.

Another person discovered that his car had been wrecked when a meteorite smashed through its hood and broke the radiator.

But it's a very rare thing to suffer injury or damage from meteorites. Like someone said, you're more likely to be struck by lightning.

Answer 8

James H, I suggest you go read a science journal or even simply buy a book on astronomy. Your answer definitey proves you don't belong in this section.

First off, these 'falling stars' are meteors. Secondly, the changes of a meteor hitting us are very small. Also, we are very alert to when meteorites will actually hit, so if one was to fall, we would know. Meteor impacts could indeed wipe out entire civilizations. Definitely, life as it is known today would never be the same. However, a large meteor impact would not necessarily mean that all life on earth would cease to exist.

The damage caused by a meteor is not limited to the immediate vicinity of the impact site, though everything there is sure to vaporize in the explosion. The resulting dust cloud would again block out the sun, preventing farms from producing food.

At the same time, the ejecta or the various particles suspended in the air would act much like what the CFCs do with the ozone layer. Whatever amount of sunlight that got through the earth's atmosphere wouldn’t be bounced back to space. As a result, global temperatures and radiation levels would rise. As a result, not only would impact survivors starve to death, they would also probably burn from the sporadic yet intense bursts of radiation.

Meteor impacts cause oxygen levels to rise at astounding heights. Coupled with the greenhouse effect described above, high oxygen levels can lead to firestorms and widespread combustion. These fires use up the oxygen, eventually increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

As a result, people would probably take to living underground where some oxygen reserves would hopefully be found. Going to the surface could mean suffocating to death.

The most widely held explanation for the sudden extinction of dinosaurs is that a large meteor crashed through the earth's atmosphere with such energy that a dust cloud rose up to block the sun from the entire planet. As a result, plants could no longer photosynthesize the nutrients they needed, starting off a domino effect of events that overturned an entire ecosystem.

If the same were to occur today, the ensuing explosion is projected to be 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After all, falling from space generates momentous amounts of velocity and energy no human implement could replicate.

Answer 9

JAMES H IS AN IDIOT.

First off you must understand that they are not really stars, they are meteors.  The odds of one hitting you are about the same as the odds of winning the lottery twice.

Answer 10

The probability of an impact occurring in any one given time is very low, but it's actually greater than the chance of any one person dying from an airliner crash. Hundreds of millions of people fly every year worldwide and do so safely, but perhaps a 1,000 or 1,500 of them die as a result of crashes. Most of the potential impactors out there are too small to do much more than become a very bright fireball or explode and dump a shower of meteorites on the ground below. There are however a number of asteroids, some of them big enough to annihilate life on a continental scale that do come very close to us regularly. Asteroids such as Castalia, Toutatis and now Apophis pass us at regular intervals within half a million miles or less. That is close enough to shift their orbits and even set them up to hit the Earth at a later date. The most potentially hazardous asteroid I know about is Apophis, which in 2029 will come closer to us than out geostationary satellites. If it passes through a tiny region of space called a keyhole, Earth's gravity will alter it's orbit in such a way it will return 7 years later for a direct hit upon the planet. It would create a crater at least several  miles across and if it hits the ocean, a mega-tsunami that would dwarf the ones that killed 300,000 people around the Indian Ocean basin back in 2004. The waves created by Apophis hitting the ocean would initially be many hundreds of feet high and even after crossing the ocean they would easily be 100 feet or higher. That would kill everyone wherever they go. It would in a land impact wipe out all life for tens of miles in every direction, and a large metropolitan area would vanish in seconds. There would be an intense thermal pulse that could burn you to death even if you were up to 100 miles away. Everyone near the impact point would be vaporized. A blast wave of air displaced by the impact moving at supersonic speeds will occur, and that would flatten everything above ground and fill the air with all sorts of lethal debris and shrapnel. A storm of shattered and melted rock would follow, along with earth quakes that can top magnitude 9 for a large impact. People caught in that would be killed in a shower of either impact melt or rocks raining down from the sky. The air itself would become hot enough to bake people to death and set fire to everything that can burn. Massive firestorms will also be started, and they will suffocate anyone trying to take shelter underground. All these effects will occur regardless of where an asteroid of comet hits the Earth, but if the impact takes place in the sea there will be mega-tsunamis that will kill far more people than any other effect an impact from space would visit upon us. Then the dust lofted into the upper atmosphere and the disruptions of our climate and agriculture will cause many more people to die than the impact itself. Apophis would not wipe out the human race, but it would cause death and destruction on a scale never seen in recorded history. There are far larger and much deadlier asteroids out there should one of those end up on a collision course with us, we could be wiped off the face of the Earth. No such asteroid or comet is known to exist, but that doesn't mean necessarily that there isn't one out there as yet unknown with the human race's name on it. That is why more and more surveys and automated telescopes with ultra-sensitive CCD cameras are ceaselessly searching for these doomsday objects before they find us, hopefully far enough in advance for us to head off a devastating collision which would destroy us and most higher plants and animals too. This is a natural disaster human beings can predict and prevent, and there are people working to do just that.

Answer 11

You're more likely to be struck by lighting.  

Answer 12

Falling stars actually hit you all the time when you're outside.  The shooting stars we see are actually very small, about the size of a grain of sand and many, after they burn some of their parts as they travel through the atmosphere, some reach the ground on Earth.  They fall in your hair and hit you on the shoulders all the time.  If you can get to some rain gutters, take a magnet and run it through the dirt in there.  The tiny particles that stick to the magnet are space dust.  Look up.