When meteoroids hit the earth what happens?

Answer 1

Meteors hit the earth frequently. Shooting stars are space debris that burns up in the atmosphere, but small pieces often make it through.

Answer 2

When meteoroids hit the Earth, they can create impact craters, generate shock waves, and sometimes cause airbursts or explosions if they are large enough. The effects depend on the size, speed, and composition of the meteoroid.

Answer 3

It depends on the size of the meteorite. Hundreds of small cosmic bodies hit our planet every single day. In general, nothing happens because they are tiny. Ocassionally, a bigger one can smash through somebody's roof or land in a desert for all to see. Very rarely, a huge meteor can destroy - partially or completely - a planet. The force of the impact is thousand times greater than that of any bomb we chose to develop. It can even wipe out certain species (for ex, the disappearance of the dynosaurs is now attributed to a large meteorite which fell onto the Mexican Peninsula approximately 60 million years ago). The consequences are: tidal waves, floods, erruptions, the blackening of the skies which triggers a sort of artificial long winter, which in its turn causes famine, not to mention the fact that the first victims burn, whereas the last ones either freeze to death or die of hunger...

Answer 4

Yes, it can. If it is very large, it can dig a deep hole for itself and be buried there - such as the meteorite which is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Smaller meterites may simply remain on the earth's surface - like a stone thrown by a child, or a large rock.

Answer 5

Yes, it could cause a major extinction.On the other hand, in a typical year there are between 18,000 and 80,000 meteorites of 10 grams or more, hit earth. And death from meteorite strike is pretty rare.

Answer 6

Meteors don't pass Earth. A meteor is an item that has entered the Earth's atmosphere and is seen burning up. It is then either completely destroyed or will go through the atmosphere, and then become known as a meteorite. It may land on the ground and be found, or in the sea. Meteors start as bits of dirt, ice, dust or rock in space. If they don't encounter the Earth's atmosphere and become meteors, then they will stay floating in space.

Answer 7

Lots of meteors have his all over the earth throughout history. However you're probably wondering about the one credited with wiping out the dinosaurs, that one hit in the southern Gulf of Mexico

Answer 8

I don't know where its gone, but i do know that it hit the earth at Mexico. If my English is bad, I'm Dutch:P

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Thousands of meteors hit the Earth's atmosphere every day. Most of them are fairly tiny, the size of a grain of rice or so, but some larger ones do survive the passage through the atmosphere. (Smaller ones become dust, so keep that in mind; when your bookshelf gets dusty, there's your meteors!)

Once a meteor lands, it is called a meteorite. On the ground, they can be difficult to distinguish from all the other scattered rocks. One place that's easy to find meteorites is on Antarctica; a rock sitting on top of the glacial ice probably did not burrow its way up from below!

Barren desert areas like the US Southwest or the Australian Outback are also good hunting grounds.

Answer 9

An American team discovered the world's biggest meteor crater almost two kilometres deepunder the Wilkes Land region of Antarctica, directly south of Australia. They saythe500-kilometre-wide crater wascaused by a meteor almost 50 kilometres wide,the size of Sydney. The meteor struck 250 million years ago and must have been the biggest explosion ever seen on the planet, far bigger than the 10-kilometre-wide meteor which hit east of Mexico 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs. The massive explosion from the impact probably created the continent of Australia, forcing it to break away from the existing land mass. Ohio State University scientists who found the crater said the massive Antarctic crater could explain the global extinction in the Permian-Triassic period when all animal life on Earth died out, clearing the way for the dinosaurs.

Answer 10

A meteor is the glowing streak of light caused when a space rock passes through the Earth's atmosphere and is heated to incandescence by compressive heating and friction. Usually, this either vaporizes the rock or causes it to explode. If any fragments survive the fall and strike the Earth, they are called meteorites.