Have you ever wanted a shooting star? Although beautiful, shooting stars are also a sign of the space range where Earth is currently crying out. The ammunition is made up of countless space rocks, moving in mountainous areas by microscope and incredibly fast. The few people who end up getting a direct hit are called met stones.
Organizations like NASA’s CNEOS are tracking these thousands of near Earth objects. Occasionally, candidates like building-sized asteroid 2024 YR4 make headlines. In April 2025, it was announced that asteroids have a far-off chance Hit the moon in 2032.
If humanity is threatened by extinction levels, Dirt Mission 2022 has been shown to be promising by repurposing asteroids. But what happened in the past when our planet faces much larger visitors from space? And how does Asteroid 2024 YR4 stack up on some of the biggest extraterrestrial influences of astronomy?
1. Chelyabinsk Meteor
Compared to the huge shocks of ancient times, this meteor was a small stir fry, but still packed with devastating punches. On February 15, 2013, there was a 66-foot-wide hemp snip fragment called a wounded superborid on top of the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia.
That Earth’s crushing speed shredded air 19 miles above the ground, creating an energetic shock wave equivalent to dozens of Hiroshima bombs. 2013 paper in Science The damage has been confirmed. After a dizzying flash of light, the blazing rock explosion rattled the building, crushing windows, and hospitalising about 1,500 civilians with waves of rap shotguns.
Chelyabinsk’s meteors were extraordinarily large, but not alone. These so-called “fireballs” enter our sky Quite oftenrarely hits the surface, but it still has a huge impact.
read more: Thousands of met stones hit the earth every year – here’s what they bring
2. The impact of the Sudbury Basin
Our next big hit happened long before humans and complex lives evolved to witness it. Almost two billion years ago, it is now Ontario, Canada, and is estimated to have been hit by comets over six miles wide on the ground. It left after that Sudbury Basina giant oval crater, close to 40 miles long.
Despite initially violent effects, Tsunami traversing the ocean And the remnants of flying across the globe, this shocker left a great opportunity.
Once the layer of melted rock is cooled, it forms a concentrated layer of precious metals such as nickel, copper, and even gold, otherwise buried deep. Thanks to this extraterrestrial influence, Ontario generates billions of annual revenues from the wealth of the basin.
3. VREDEFORT Crater
Sudbury’s Comet lost on the massive scale, but on the shocking scale of Vredefort. According to 2022, the perpetrator could have spanned over 15 miles study It is published on Journal of Geophysics Researchthe heaviest known astroid that has ever met our planet. This collision occurred in ancient South Africa more than 2 billion years ago and formed the largest impact structure on the planet.
The energy released makes our global nuclear weapon look like a toy. The rest of the impact was designated an ancient crustal rock ring that is rarely found on the surface elsewhere. UNESCO World Heritage Site 2005. As expected, Vredefort Crater is now a hub for tourism and geological research.
4. The shock of Chicxulub
In the most famous cosmic catastrophe known to its popular imagination, Chicxulub Impactor ended its reptile reign 66 million years ago, creating a giant crater now under the Gulf of Mexico. 2019 paper Published in pnas It provides calm insight into the time that has come to light. Apocalyptic tsunamis, chart-topping earthquakes and endless wildfires have emerged as a life of survival.
This disaster is known in paleontology K-PG mass extinction. Scientists still discuss the role of long-term climate change, but the deep impact of asteroids on ecosystems is well supported.
Soot from wildfires and silicate dust thrown high with impact energy may have created a planetary cooling blanket. Researcher, Survey results It was published in Nature In 2023, we modelled it as having a potential drop of nearly 30 degrees Fahrenheit as plants have been hunger for light for years.
read more: Dinosaur-destroying asteroids have created modern rainforests
5. month
Yes, you read it correctly. According to the main people A giant shock hypothesisMars-sized protoplanet called Theia, had one effect on controlling them all. Instead of creating a crater, it gave birth to the moon 4.5 billion years ago.
Theia and formation of Earth evaporated when the shock heat fired the molten rock. Nevertheless, the stable hand of gravity allowed the Earth to reabsorb some of this emissions, and a significant portion of the remaining portion formed the moon.
Compositional analysis shows that our moon is remarkably similar to its parent, Earth, at the chemical level. Nevertheless, science is not completely resolved. 2024 paper Published in Space: Science and Technology We propose numerous potential revisions to this model, including multiple small effects and much larger thea.
From triggering tide waves to granting the moon cycle, the chaotic impact shapes our world and continues for billions of years. We must maintain a future-trained telescope, as we remember the strange alien scars of the distant past.
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