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For all practical purposes, the answer is no. The moon provides the Earth with no significant protection from impacts from meteorites, asteroids or comets.

The Moon isn't nearly the same size as the Earth and occupies a tiny fraction of the perimeter of the planet. It's the atmosphere that protects us from small asteroids; they burn up most of the time before they reach the ground. Some are deflected (bounce off) the atmosphere if they hit at a shallow angle. These can appear as fireballs that cross the sky.

For protection, one needs a much larger body that has enough mass to significantly alter the trajectory of an incoming object. There is some evidence that Jupiter has such an effect on objects entering the solar system, but even then one cannot expect that more than a tiny fraction of incoming comets or other objects might be captured or otherwise redirected. Of course, a redirected comet might, by chance, be directed towards a collision as well as away from one.

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12y ago

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