![]() ![]() Ancient craters on Earth’s surface prove that large objects have hit Earth in the past, and there’s no reason to think this won’t continue in the future. Not much in our lifetimes - perhaps 1 in 10,000 - but over thousands or millions of years, major impacts become pretty likely. ![]() What is the chance that an asteroid will hit Earth during your lifetime? There are no documented instances of a meteorite striking an airplane, nor has the Federal Bureau of Investigation released any official statement on the likely effects of such an impact, either in general or in the case of Flight 800. If any part of the meteoroid survives burning up and actually hits the Earth, that remaining bit is then called a meteorite. Meteors are commonly called falling stars or shooting stars. The short-lived trail of light the burning meteoroid produces is called a meteor. It is commonly called the Hodges meteorite because a fragment of it struck Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges (1920–1972). The Sylacauga meteorite fell on November 30, 1954, at 12:46 local time (18:46 UT) in Oak Grove, Alabama, near Sylacauga, in the United States. The last known impact of an object of 10 km (6 mi) or more in diameter was at the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. When was the last time a meteor hit Earth? The asteroid struck the Earth in the Gulf of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula creating the 180-kilometer wide Chicxulub crater. How big was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? An estimated 25 million meteoroids, micrometeoroids and other space debris enter Earth’s atmosphere each day, which results in an estimated 15,000 tonnes of that material entering the atmosphere each year.
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