-
Asked by anon-191654 to Kathryn, Graeme, Chris, Anne, Agnes, Adam on 7 Nov 2018.
-
Agnes Wojtusiak answered on 7 Nov 2018:
It’s happened before – that’s how the moon came to exist!
.
If it happened now though, it would probably kill us all…
.
(but don’t worry, all the planets are on their own paths around the sun, so should never crash into each other)
-
-
Kathryn answered on 7 Nov 2018:
It would be rather catastrophic. The world would break apart all life would be whipped out except possibly some very hidden bacteria. The energy from the impact would melt the continents and vaporize the oceans. The target and impactor would mix meaning we would have a very different earth than the one today.
Basically, it would be bad. The earth is hit every day by the small object but it would only take a small asteroid to cause a major disruption, it would cause extinction at the pint in hit and then the rest of the world would be effected by the debris and energy from the impact which would induce rapid climate changes and tidal waves. It would be bad, killed off the dinos.
-
Anne Green answered on 7 Nov 2018:
As Agnieszka and Kathryn have already said, it would be bad. It would be like a large asteroid hitting the Earth. It would possibly destory the Earth and definitely destroy life on Earth. Even a medium size asteroid (a few kilometres wide) hitting the Earth would release the same amount of energy as setting off millions of nuclear bombs simultaneously, causing Earthquakes and tsunamis and filling the atmosphere with debris that would block out light from the Sun and change the climate.
However you don’t need to worry about this happening. As Agnieszka said the planets in the Solar System are all moving around the Sun in (roughly) circles, so they won’t crash into us. Collisions with asteroids that are big enough to cause lots of damage are very rare. Scientists are monitoring the paths of big asteroids and if one looked like it was going to hit the Earth we could deflect it or destroy it.
-
Graeme Poole answered on 8 Nov 2018:
Yes the Moon formed when a Mars-sized planet smashed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago. The entire Earth melted and some debris was thrown up into space, which then formed the Moon.
If a planet were to smash into the Earth today a similar thing would happen. The entire Earth would melt and we certainly wouldn’t survive!!
-
Comments