There are hundred and thousands, if not millions, of rocks flying around in space. They come in all shapes and sizes, made of all different types of materials. One thing they all have in common is they are moving very fast and have a potential to crash into Earth. These rocks are commonly known as meteorites, comets, and asteroids. It it widely believed that a meteorite crashed into earth millions of years ago, and that is what resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Here’s something a little unnerving, the Earth gets hit with meteorites on a regular basis! Lucky for us, most of them burn up in the atmosphere. The ones that do make it the surface usually aren’t very large and seldom cause problems. It’s the big ones that we need to worry about.
If a big enough asteroid happened to crash into Earth again, the results would be devastating. Many different scenarios could arise. First, if it crashed into land it could send up so much dust into the atmosphere that it would essentially block out the sun. No sun means no plants, no plants no food, and so on. The second scenario is if it crashes into the ocean. This could displace so much water that is ruins all life in the ocean as well as sending massive tidal waves or tsunamis at land destroying whole regions in the process.
