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Originally Posted by joecalabre
Actually, Asteroid 1950DA is on a collision course with Earth and will strike In Feb of 2880. It is considered a dinosaur (or in our case Human) killer.
Just in 2005, there have been 10 asteroids that missed us by less than 20% the distance from the Earth to the sun, the closest being just 5/100 the distance between the Earth and the sun.
Look at the moon and all it's craters and that will give you an idea of how frequent impacts are. The moon however doesn't have any erosion or water to cover up the evidence.
Think of Earth's orbit as a highway with infinite number of cross streets. Asteroids, comets, meteors and such cross through our orbit all the time. The trick is one crossing our street at the very moment we are there.
It is estimated that we are behind schedule of a major impact by 10,000 years. The last MINOR one in the 1920's devastated a big chuck of the Siberian forest and if it hit a populated city area in the US it would have killed 1,000,000 plus.
Just a matter of time and luck.
PS. On a side note the one thing that will hit us and destroy not just earth but the whole Milky way is another galaxy. Andromeda is moving towards us at a staggering speed and will collide with our own Galaxy in a few short billion years. We won't be around though because our dying Sun would have already burnt us to a crisp. That is if the moon doesn't kill us first. It is moving away from us a few inches a year and eventually brake away from orbit and cause us further slowing down and global disasters. Another interesting fact is the Tsunami we just had has caused the Earth to wobble 2/100 of a degree further and slowed down the Earth's rotation by a few miliseconds each year. Another is the magnetic poles are in the process of flipping, where south becomes north and north becomes south. This will have global technology failure that wil last for weeks, maybe months.
If it's not one thing...
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I think there's now only a 20% of Asteroid 1950DA striking. We just can't plot orbits that accurately. Each time the orbit is checked, they get a different number.
My worry is that only 10% of earth-crossing asteroids have been detected.
There was an asteroid/comet explosion in the upper atmosphere in the 90's that was roughly the same size as a Hirohima atomic bomb, but it barely even made the news because it explode over a remote section of the south pacific and caused no damage.
The pole flop worries me as much as an asteroid impact. Super calderas worry me even more. It's though that 90% of the human population on earth was wiped out by a super caldera roughly 65,000 years ago.
There are an awful lot of things that could happen, and happen fast. This is why it bothers me when people talk about wasting money on space travel. We're living in a condemned building. We just don't know exactly when the wrecker ball will start swinging. Seems to me we'd better start looking for another place to live before that happens.