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Name: jessica a byrne
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1993 - 1999
Question:
Would meteors ever hit the earth?

Replies:
YES! meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere all the time: most are so small that they burn-up in the atmosphere; if they're large enough to survive and hit the ground, they become "meteorites."

A little history (in chronological order):

1) 65 million years ago: one theory scientists use to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs is a large meteor, asteroid, or comet hitting the Earth. Evidence for the crater such an impact would have left has recently been found in the Yucatan Penninsula area.

2) a few tens of thousands of years ago: Meteor Crater was formed in Arizona. It is about one kilometer wide. I recently saw a similar but older crater in the Altiplano of Bolivia.

3) early this century: a huge fireball hit a remote region of Siberia.

Fun fact: the Earth gains about a million kilograms of mass per day from meteors!

Hawley


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