What would happen
if a meteor fell to Earth?What would happen
if a meteor fell to Earth?
More than anything, it depends on the size of the meteor! Fortunately, space rocks that are large enough to do serious damage to Earth are quite rare and don't wander into our part of the solar system very often. Most of the smaller pieces burn up in the atmosphere and settle to Earth as dust. Earth picks up tons of space dust every day!
Other planets' surfaces show the rugged history of the solar system's past by their large numbers of impact craters. Most rocks will hit the planet's surface at about the same speed, so the energy, or "kick" of the impact depends on the mass of the meteor. Some of that energy will heat the atmosphere as it falls; some impactors, like the one that hit Siberia in 1908, burn up entirely in the air. If not, the energy at impact sends shock waves out and down from the point of impact, the first step in the formation of a big crater.
The Barringer crater in Arizona is 4000 feet across and 600 feet deep, yet it was probably formed by the impact of a meteor only 50 meters in diameter 50,000 years ago. Don't worry, these events are very rare; the odds are, well, astronomical!
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