What Are The Chances An Asteroid Will Impact Earth In 2032?

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For a few days in mid-February, headlines around the world buzzed about the potential for an asteroid to hit the Earth in 2023—specifically, asteroid 2024 YR4 . The chance of this impact rose to a high of 3.1 percent on Feb. 18.

As a planetary geologist, my research focuses on meteorite impact craters , the scars of large asteroid and cometary impacts in Earth's past.

There are countless numbers of asteroids and an unknown number of comets throughout our solar system. Most of these objects date back to the very beginnings of our solar system, around 4.5 billion years ago.

Research has identified approximately 200 locations where these asteroids or comets have struck the Earth in the past to form meteorite impact craters. It's very rare that planetary geologists can tell whether it was an asteroid or comet that hit.

One of the most famous of these 200 or so impact craters is the 200 km-diameter Chicxulub impact crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This impact wiped out 65 percent of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago .

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