What Would Happen If An Asteroid Was Going To Hit Earth?

If you've seen the Netflix movie Don't Look Up, you're probably worried about asteroid collisions. Not all asteroids, though, would spell the end of humanity.

To kill us all, the space rock would have to be quite enormous. The asteroid that took off the dinosaurs was estimated to be roughly 7.5 miles wide by scientists.

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Because of the power of the impact and its knock-on effect on the ecosystem, if an asteroid of that magnitude hit Earth now, everything would change quickly.

Britt Scharringhausen, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Beloit College, told Inverse: “All of the ash from the fires and all of the finer-grain debris from the impact will hang out in the atmosphere for a long time, and we get what’s called impact winter.”

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“It’s going to block the sunlight, and all that ash falling into the ocean acidifies the top layers.”

“So you burn things, kill everything in the ocean, and freeze the Earth, and it goes through about two years of constant winter.”

After a massive asteroid impact, Scharringhausen does not believe that all life on Earth would perish.

The dinosaurs were slain by an asteroid attack, but few little creatures survived.

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Humans could likely survive as well if they took the proper precautions.

Scharringhausen explained: “Not everything will die. If we’re thinking about people, the way to survive would be to get underground.”

“You could maybe ride it out in a bunker if you’ve got the supplies to make it through that period of winter where you can’t grow any edible food.”

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“Maybe the finicky crops that humans like to grow won’t come through it so well, but there’s that seed repository, so if those are well-protected enough, you could get agriculture restarted.”

Some researchers believe that the Earth is not yet prepared to protect itself against potentially devastating asteroids.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once sparked concern by tweeting: “a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defense.”

However, Nasa is looking into several defense options.

It recently launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission.

Nasa said: “DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.”

In September, the DART spacecraft will collide with Dimorphos, a tiny asteroid that will be thrown off course.