Around Sixty-five million years ago, it is said that an asteroid the size of a mountain entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The atmosphere was filled with gas, dust, and debris that quickly changed the planet’s climate. The asteroid continued its descent, and eventually crashed on the Earth’s surface. And just like that, many living things, such as the dinosaurs, were wiped out into extinction. This hypothetical scenario was called the Alvarez hypothesis, named after Luis and Walter Alvarez.
There’s a good chance your mind might have conjured up an image of an enormous asteroid barrelling down through the atmosphere, wreathed in fire, slamming into the earth and creating worldwide dust storms, heat, and general death.
This is a fairly accurate doomsday scenario – one that has happened before and will happen again. For over four billion years, the Earth has been constantly clobbered by asteroids and other objects zooming around the solar system. While the majority have burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere, others have smashed into the surface and caused global devastation.
With these things in mind, space programs that scan the Earth’s surroundings have been dispatched to monitor threatening asteroids. Unfortunately, identifying which asteroid will most likely hit Earth prove to be a difficult endeavor, as a lot of factors are involved.
More about this over at Cosmos Magazine.
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