We know it might be too soon to talk about this since an asteroid literally just flew past Earth last week at very close proximity but we know you’re also curious to find out if we will ever die from an asteroid accidentally hitting our planet? (If you haven’t seen “Your Name”, please do yourself a favor and watch it ASAP)
In a video released by NASA on Wednesday, Kelly Fast, a NASA scientist, answered the burning question for the millions of curious and concerned minds, “Will an asteroid ever hit Earth?” According to the asteroid expert, “Yes, asteroids have hit Earth over the course of its history and it will happen again.” Well, that wasn’t very reassuring…Relax! What the scientist means is that the chance of an asteroid hitting Earth is very low and thanks to the advanced technology and detection systems, we are getting better at spotting and tracking potential threats caused by the solar system bodies. All the stunning views we get to experience during a meteor shower are just bits of space rock and dust entering our atmosphere which doesn’t really affect the Earth’s surface. “They happen on time scales of hundreds to thousands to millions of years,” Fast added.
You might be wondering that the dinosaurs would disagree with the above statement if they were alive (but they’re not because an asteroid did kill all of them) But rest assured, scientists from Southwest Research Institute calculated the estimated time it would take for an asteroid of that scale to hit Earth and found that something like that could occur once in every 250 million years, so it’s safe to say that we don’t have to worry about it anytime soon and can leave it on our future generations to figure it out themselves (if Earth still exists by then, that is)
Even though there isn’t any chance of an asteroid hitting our planet anytime soon, the scientists are still keeping a lookout for any abnormalities in the existing asteroids’ trajectories just to be on the safe side. But you don’t have to lose your sleep over this, it’s all under control!
