Is it true that undetected meters that can destroy the earth is coming to earth?

Answer 1

Hmmm. There are several points here.

1. It is true that a large enough meteor or asteroid colliding with the Earth could cause widespread destruction. If the object is large enough, it is possible - although highly unlikely - that a significant fraction of life on Earth might be destroyed. It has happened several times before!

2. Our telescopes are good enough now to detect anything big enough to be a "dinosaur killer" like the asteroid that hit Mexico 65 million years ago. That object, estimated to be about 6 miles long, killed about half of all life on Earth.

3. There are no known asteroids or comets heading toward Earth. There are several asteroids that occasionally come close, but they will miss. There is an asteroid named Apophis which will make close approaches to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029 and Friday, April 13, 2036. But it will certainly miss in 2029, and very probably miss in 2036.

4. Our big worry now should be a comet coming in from the outer regions of our solar system. We might have only a year or two warning between the time it is discovered and the time it could cross Earth's orbit. The chances that a comet would drop from the Oort Cloud on a collision course with Earth are very very low - but it could happen. In 1994, the comet Shoemaker Levy 9 collided with Jupiter, and something hit Jupiter again just this summer.

5. Thousands of meteors strike the Earth every day. Most of them are smaller than a grain of rice, but a few times a year there are space rocks that survive long enough to actually hit the ground. Most do little or no damage, but there have been a few unlucky accidents. Last summer, a boy in Germany was hit in the hand by a meteor the size of a pea, and about 30 years ago, a meteor hit a house and injured a woman asleep in her bed! And I wouldn't have wanted to be the guy who was trying to file the insurance claim when a meteor destroyed his new car right in his driveway!

So, the answer is, No, there is nothing that we know of that is on a collision course with Earth. The chances of this happening in your lifetime are very, very low. But the Earth will be around for another 4 billion years or so; it WILL happen someday.

But not today.