Posted on Saturday, January 04, 2014
Every year Earth gets hit by about 40.000 to almost 80.000 tons of space debris that the Earth comes across on it's orbit around the Sun. Most of the debris comes from comet's but also asteroids, and usually the pieces that hit Earth are dust-sized and therefore don't reach the ground.
Ocassionally though something larger happens to get in Earth's way.
On January 2nd at 3AM GMT the first asteroid discovered this year, 2014 AA hit Earth. The asteroid's size was estimated to have been about 2 to 3 meters across, not being much of a threat unless it would have hit a city.
For an asteroid impact to cause a global catastrophe the object should be at least about a km across, fortunately there are research projects aiming to catalog all objects of 1km or larger size that might impact Earth.
Map of the possible impact points of 2014 AA, produced by astronomer Bill Gray.
Ocassionally though something larger happens to get in Earth's way.
On January 2nd at 3AM GMT the first asteroid discovered this year, 2014 AA hit Earth. The asteroid's size was estimated to have been about 2 to 3 meters across, not being much of a threat unless it would have hit a city.
For an asteroid impact to cause a global catastrophe the object should be at least about a km across, fortunately there are research projects aiming to catalog all objects of 1km or larger size that might impact Earth.
Map of the possible impact points of 2014 AA, produced by astronomer Bill Gray.