8 Things That Would Happen If An Asteroid Hit Earth

1. Other Sizes, Other Results

Asteroids, like humans, come in all shapes and sizes (and, yes, all asteroids are beautiful). Our hypothetical scenario of a Cretaceous€“Paleogene extinction event happening any time in the near or distant future is so unlikely as to make it virtually impossible - but the Earth could get in the way of other asteroids and they'd all have different outcomes.

An asteroid the size of a house would create an energy release roughly the same as the Hiroshima bomb and would cause extensive damage to a city, but wouldn't necessarily have a cataclysmic global impact.

On the other hand, impact with an object like Ceres - a dwarf planet within the asteroid belt - would reduce the Earth to rubble, forming a brand new asteroid belt between Mars and Venus. This impact simulator created by Purdue University allows you to control all of the variables of an impact. Be warned, it's kinda addictive.

The good news is that scientists think that we're pretty much safe from a world-ending collision and time soon, with impacts capable of global disruption only occurring every hundred million years or so.

Phew.

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