When will something for sure hit the Earth and kill everything?

Question

It won't happen anytime soon (I think in thousands-hundred thousands of years) but I thought scientists already found out when something big will definitely hit the earth? Is this right?

Answer 1

No.  Nothing is currently being tracked that will strike the Earth and kill everything.  That would take something larger than the 6 mile diameter asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.  Everything larger than 6 miles in diameter that is within 4 billion miles of the Sun has probably been found and nothing has an orbit at the present time that will cause it to strike the Earth.  It is POSSIBLE, not likely, not probable, that there are large objects in cometlike orbits that are currently too far from the Sun to be detected.  But, statistically, it would take a LOT of them to endanger the Earth, because the odds of any of them having precisely the correct orbit to hit the Earth on their multi-thousand year orbits is very very low.

Most likely, the next thing that hits the Earth and causes a fuss will be a kilometer or less in diameter.  There are no predictions for anything like that.  Although something that large will definitely not be fun for the portion of Earth surrounding its impact site, it won't be large enough to destroy ALL life on Earth.

Get a good night's sleep tonight and and every night for the rest of your life.  The odds are very low that an asteroid or comet impact is in YOUR future.

Answer 2

We had a near miss the other day:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080713/s...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gXGTcd6...

Answer 3

Nobody really knows this answer.  It could happen in the next year, or not for the next million.  There are potential "near misses" that have been calculated, but there could be a dark, cold rock headed our way that has never been seen nor plotted before.

Answer 4

Doomsday would make the news, no matter how far in the future it was predicted.  Hence there are lots of articles about M31 in Andromeda crashing into the Milky Way in about 3 billion years.  Of course Earth probably wouldn't be affected by that collision, and all life will be extinct by that date anyway, but there is a statistical chance Earth could be thrown into space by gravitational interactions.  Wouldn't that be fun!!!  But there aren't any predictions for future impacts.

Actually an asteroid could destroy all life on this planet on any given afternoon.  Not all asteroids or comets are charted and a bolt from the blue, while VERY unlikely is always possible.  If its large enough no only does everything die, but the entire surface of the earth is converted into  an ocean of molten lava.  Actually extremeophile bacteria living deep in the crust would survive such an event, but nothing else.  

Comets also provide a wonderful opportunity for worldwide destruction and they can prove more annoying than asteroids since there are lots of them in the Kuyper belt and you never know when some circumstance in the belt will send a comet zooming into the inner system.  And comets are much less predictable than asteroids.  Comets orbits can be swayed by the planets, impacts, or jet reactions of their own volatile gasses.  Also their mass changes an unspecified amount with every trip around the sun.  Cometary orbits are very much educated guesses.

Answer 5

go to youtube.com look under Hubble  and they said there a chance it could hit us but it's not a certainty

Answer 6

I believe that they said that the closest and the biggest asteroid that has the greatest chance of impacting earth will not do so for around 400,000 years. However they are constatnly searching for and finding potentially destructive asteroids every day..so who really knows, it could happen tomorrow. That being said, the super volcano under yellowstone is supposed to errupt every 600,000 years or so and is already past due. If that does in fact errupt there will be ALOT of death and destruction all over the united states.

Answer 7

For sure?  Eventually.  You heard it first here.

At the moment there are no serious known threats.

But if you like this sort of thing, study this page:

Answer 8

thats a more than likely to happen it has happened in the past and it will again

Answer 9

Y es , There is an asteroid which may hit the earth on 14th nov (not sure about date ) 2028 , having size near about 6 sqr kilometer  but the chance for hit is  0.1 % ,but if it  hit earth then it will  be more dangerous ( because if this particular asteroid will hit by some other asteroid then it may change its direction towards earth .

Answer 10

well if its 100s of thousands of years i know for sure they will find something to destruct the metore so it can destroy earth

Answer 11

The exact time will be on December 20th, 2012 at 10:57 pm eastern standard time.  trust me on this one... ;>)

Answer 12

Nobody can answer this question with certainty. There are probability studies, and some suggest that we are more than halfway from the last major hit (around the turn of the century, if Tunguska was indeed a rocky object), but there is no way to be sure. Many small to medium objects in or near the solar system are tracked and plotted, but none have a very high certainty of a hit in the foreseeable future.