You may have seen and heard a lot about meteors, asteroids or comets hitting Earth in movies and news headlines. While they often seem like disaster scenarios, their accuracy can be questionable. However, before stepping into this discussion, it is useful to know the differences between them.
According to NASA’s definition, meteorites, asteroids and comets in the Solar System are all “space objects orbiting the Sun”, but have slight differences. Asteroids are small, stony bodies that appear as tiny dots of light when viewed through a telescope, and are usually found in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Meteorites are actually meteorites approaching Earth and entering our atmosphere. Meteorites, on the other hand, are tiny fragments of varying sizes, ranging from the size of a small pebble to a meter in size, often broken off by an impact from asteroids or comets.
Meteors enter the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speeds and begin to burn, creating a streak of light at the same time. What we see as shooting stars are actually these pieces of spacecraft.
Comets are large bodies of dust and ice that orbit the Sun and have a tail that follows them. These objects are billions of years old and can be defined as leftovers from the formation of the Solar System.
Of course, while knowing the differences between these objects is important, it may not be so important to answer the question of whether we’ll have time for a solution once someone gets close enough to crash into our Earth. Under the right conditions, each of these can be just as deadly to us as the other.
But the important point here is the “under the right conditions” part. Considering the countless deadly dangers we face in our daily lives, we can say that the danger posed by these space objects is not worth losing your sleep.
Many different meteorite impacts have been recorded throughout Earth’s history, resulting in injuries from side effects such as debris and glass shards. However, according to NASA’s Bill Cooke, four major meteorite impacts have been recorded throughout history that actually caused significant damage.
As Gordon L. Dillow said in 2019, there are small asteroids that enter Earth’s atmosphere almost constantly, but they disappear harmlessly by quickly burning or exploding in the atmosphere.
The probability of a large object hitting the Earth, such as an asteroid that allegedly caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, is incredibly low. The probability of the asteroid 1950DA, which is closest to us and poses the greatest risk among thousands of dangerously sized space objects in our close vicinity in spatial terms, to hit the Earth seems to be one in 8,000. However, this risk of collision is 800 years from now.
Finally, of course, there is a possibility that an asteroid that will cause serious problems and damage, especially on a regional scale, although it will not destroy life on Earth, has not been noticed until now and will be detected relatively late. Fortunately, research is being carried out against this risk. Space agencies like NASA are constantly making observations that keep us on the lookout for new meteorites. In addition to these observations, scientists devise various theories and experiments that will change the path of an asteroid.
For example, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will attempt to change the direction of an asteroid’s motion with a kinetic impact. The DART spacecraft will deliberately crash into an asteroid that poses no danger to Earth, just to see what happens…
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