We have extensive evidence that Earth has already been hit by asteroids many times throughout

history-the most famous (or infamous) example is probably the asteroid or comet that created the
Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico and may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs at
the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago. A more recent but less devastating example,
called the Tunguska event, occurred in 1908, when a meteor or comet exploded over the wilderness of
Siberia, damaging farmland and leveling trees for miles around. Because most of the earth is covered by
oceans, there may also be many small impacts that go unnoticed. There are thousands of small bodies
that we call asteroids or meteoroids in orbit around the sun. Many of these objects are called near-Earth
asteroids (or NEAs) because they have orbits that repeatedly bring them close to, or intersect with,
Earth's orbit. Although the odds of any one particular asteroid ever impacting Earth are quite low, it is
still likely that one day our planet will be hit by another asteroid. At the current rate of impacts, we
would expect about one large asteroid to impact Earth every 100 million years or so. For that reason
several programs, such as the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have been undertaken around the world to discover and
monitor potentially Earth-threatening asteroids. When a new asteroid is discovered, astronomers
analyze it to determine whether its orbit around the sun could bring it close to the Earth. They take
successive images of the asteroid over the course of days after its discovery in order to predict its
probable orbital path for the near future. The predicted orbit is then compared to the orbit and position
of Earth to check for any times when they might pass close to each other. Although scientists can
calculate a most-likely orbit from these early observations, each single observation of the asteroid's
position contains some uncertainty. Most asteroids are small objects, a few meters to a few tens of
meters across, and even the resolving power of a large telescope cannot determine their positions
exactly. The uncertainties in an asteroid's position lead to uncertainties in how well we can determine
its speed and direction of travel. As a result, a large number of possible orbits for an asteroid can be
predicted within these windows of uncertainty. Careful computer simulations are used to calculate the
future orbital path of the asteroid, with randomly chosen initial positions and velocities that fall within
the margin of error of the telescopic observations to date. A large number of these simulations are
generated for each asteroid. The probability that any particular one will actually hit Earth is given by the
fraction of the extrapolated paths that leads to an impact. For example, if one million different possible
orbits are calculated, and one of those leads to an impact, then we say that the odds of the asteroid
hitting our world are one million to one. The uncertainties in an asteroid's orbit are greatest in the hours
just after its discovery, and thus the calculated probability of an impact also tends to be the highest at
these times. As we monitor an asteroid over the course of the weeks or months that follow, its orbit
becomes more and more certain, and we become more knowledgeable about its position at a given date
in the future. We can then rule out many possible paths it may take. In most cases, monitoring the
asteroid over a few weeks quickly leads to an impact probability of very nearly zero.
The most important factor determining the damage of an asteroid impact is the energy it releases upon
impact. This is calculated by multiplying half the asteroid's mass by the square of its velocity. The typical
range of asteroid velocities is quite limited most measured values are between 12 and 20 km/sec (7.5
- 12.4 mi/sec). Comets are much faster, ranging between 50 and 70 km/sec (31 - 43.5 mi/sec). Yet, what
asteroids lack in speed, they make up for in density -- while comets are thought to made up of mostly
ice, with a density of only 1000 kg/m3, asteroids made of solid rock have a density of about 3000 kg/m3,
whereas the rarer (8%) metallic asteroids have a density of 8000 kg/m3. These density values intimately
effect the final consequences of the asteroid impact. Other factors influencing the environmental effects
of an asteroid impact include its size (obviously), angle of impact (the most probable is 45 degrees), and
impact surface (water, silicate rock, or crystalline rock). The size of asteroids is distributed along a power
law, where asteroids above a certain size are exponentially rarer than smaller ones. Asteroids about a
meter in diameter are thought to enter the Earth's atmosphere about once every month, leaving 100 ft
(30 m) craters in their wake. Asteroids a kilometer in diameter impact only once every million years or
so, releasing as much as 100 gigatons of TNT, 200 times stronger than the most powerful nuclear
weapon ever tested. Such an impact would shatter glass windows as far as 500 km away, leaving a 20
km (12 mi) crater. The largest asteroid impact in the last 4 billion years is thought to be the asteroid
which created the Vredefort crater in South Africa, with a diameter of about 20 km (12 mi). Large
asteroids do their damage in one of three ways: the initial air blast and thermal wave, which can be
strong enough to incinerate forests; the ejecta, which can bathe continent-size areas in magma, and the
blocking out of the Sun due to soot particles in the upper atmosphere. The last factor is most terminal
for life, as without photosynthesis, food chains collapse, and only decomposers and scavengers would
be able to survive for more than a decade. In the case of impacts with asteroids over 20 km (12 mi) in
diameter, scientists believe that all complex life (including all animals and higher plants) would be wiped
out, leaving nothing but microbes, similar to the situation on Earth around a billion years ago.