Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for more than 160 million years, but a visitor from outer space put an end to their kingdom. It even caused their extinction. About 66 million years ago, an asteroid with a diameter of 10 kilometers hit the Earth, and the earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, volcanic eruptions and climate catastrophe it caused wiped out 75 percent of life on Earth at that time.
But Earth continued to protect itself and live on. So does this mean that our planet will never be destroyed by an asteroid impact? If even an asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs couldn’t do anything to Earth, what can? Could an asteroid impact destroy Earth? If so, how big would the asteroid to hit have to be?
The short answer to that question is: An asteroid probably the size of a planet would have to be struck to destroy our planet. But even a much smaller one is enough to destroy life on Earth.
Brian Toon, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, who studies asteroid impacts, said: “An object larger than Mars crashed into Earth and formed the Moon. But nothing happened to Earth,” he says.
A large space rock is actually enough to seriously devastate life on Earth, as evidenced by the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. NASA considers any asteroid larger than 140 meters to be a potential hazard. According to NASA, the impact of such an asteroid could destroy an entire city and devastate the land around it.
Gerrit L.Verschuur, an astrophysicist at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, says a collision with a rock at least 1 mile wide would trigger global climate catastrophes, triggering the end of civilization. And, if the impacted asteroid were as large as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs in time, it is likely that all of humanity and most of life on Earth would be wiped out. However, our planet will continue to revolve around the Sun. The only thing that can prevent this is the collision of an object at least as big as Earth.
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