Oct
27
What are the chances the Earth won’t get hit by another doomsday type asteroid of comet?
Whenever you hear scientists talk about the subject of doomsday impacts, they always say, “it’s happened before, it will happen again”.
But I have to wonder what the chances are it won’t happen again.
Answer by Jim D
Over a short time period like a human lifetime, the chances are almost zero. But given a large time period like millions or billions of years, the odds would be 100%.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
honestly, it’s hard to make a prediction, we only have one planet that we have good data on. But I’d guess the odds that earth never gets hit by a large body in the next 4 billion years (when the sun swallows earth) is around zero.
it will definately happen, its just a matter of time.
Assuming a major extinction event occurs roughtly every 50 million years, that would make odds about 1 in a million of no such events within the next billion years. It would be like flipping a coin 20 times and it landing on heads every time (i.e. the odds are 1 in 2^20). 1 billion years is approximatly how long until the Earth leaves the sun’s habitable zone and goes completely exctinct anyway.
The probability of anything that has happened before, happening again under the assumption of infinite time, is 1. Which means it is definite. Of course that’s under the assumption of infinite time. So it’s only if something else doesn’t get us first.
It’s impossible to estimate an accurate probability of something happening without major variables, which we don’t have. We can’t include something as a variable if we don’t have knowledge of its exsistance.
It wil happen but not now maybe over 6 billion years
Throughout the Earths lifespan, the chance of getting hit by an asteroid is 100%. Scientists are right, it has happened before and it will happen again. Earth is bound to get hit by an asteroid someday. Some where out there, there is an asteroid with our name on it.
But over the course of the next century, the chances of getting hit by an asteroid is 1 in 250,000 because an asteroid called Apophis is believed to be heading towards Earth and will reach us in 2036. But the chances of it hitting us in 2036 are very slim.
The chances of getting hit by an asteroid after 2037 and the next 100 years is almost 0%.
one billion to one