Asteroids Are Crashing Into Earth More Than Twice As Often Now

Asteroids are hitting Earth 2.6 times more frequently than they were in the previous 700 million years, according to the Associated Press.

There’s no need to worry the study says, which was published in Science— asteroids only collide with Earth every million or few million years.

NASA has no pending threats on it’s list of potential big disasters.

Sara Mazrouei, the study’s lead author and a University of Toronto planetary scientist says it’s a game of probability: “The events are still rare and far between that I’m not too worried about it.”

Mazrouei, along with colleagues in the U.S. and U.K., created a list of impact craters on the moon and on Earth that were bigger than 12 miles wide and formulated dates of impact.

The team found 29 craters no older than 290 million years and nine craters that are between 291 and 650 million years old.

“Extrapolating for what can’t be seen brings the total to about 260 space crashes on Earth in the last 290 million years. Adding in other factors, the science team determined that the current space crash rate is 2.6 times more than the previous 700 million years,” AP explains.

So what made the past 290 million years an asteroid party on Earth?

“Perhaps an asteroid family was broken up in the asteroid belt,” Mazrouei speculated. Then, they made their way to Earth and her moon where Earth took the brunt of the damage from the asteroid field because it’s a bigger target with higher gravity.