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Asked by paris305 to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 13 Mar 2014.
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Alexander Finch answered on 13 Mar 2014:
Absolutely – 100%! In fact, thousands do each day around the world 🙂 Fortunately, most are very small and don’t cause any problems unless they hit someone or something. Sometimes they do, but this is pretty rare.
However, there is a small chance that bigger ones could hit the Earth. About a year ago, one crashed into Russia which hurt some people. This is almost sure to happen again every few years or decades.
There is a lot of research now going on trying to find really big ones that would be very dangerous and would pose a big danger to a city, country or even the whole planet. Fortunately, these are quite rare and none have happened in a a long time. We’re looking to find these in space before they come near Earth so we have some warning and can deal with them!!
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Jessica Marshall answered on 13 Mar 2014:
What Alex said…
We are also looking at ways to stop the big ones. One really cool idea is called a gravity tractor – basically something quite massive that can attract a meteor towards it and so miss the Earth… -
Aron Kisdi answered on 14 Mar 2014:
What Alex and Jess said.
As Jess said the gravity tractor is one of the ideas how to deflect a big one (probably the best idea). It is a bad idea to use explosives or nuclear missiles to try to break up a large asteroid like you see in movies. It is much easier to deflect it (change the orbit it is on).
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