Meteors,
Meteors, a subject science fiction
loves to use. Meteors are something many people fear and dread, but if it
weren’t for meteors earth wouldn’t exist.
But first lets put something
straight, the difference between meteors, asteroids, and comets. Asteroids are
small inactive bodies of rock, carbon or metal that orbits the sun. Comets are
similar but made up of dirt and ices. It is quite hard to distinguish an
asteroid from a comet. A meteoroid is a particle from a comet or asteroid,
while a meteor is a meteoroid observed as it burns up in the earth’s
atmosphere. Most meteors are the size of pebbles and usually burn up in earth’s
atmosphere.
Meteors/asteroids contain
everything needed to make a planet. In fact earth was once an asteroid,
circling the sun. Back then it was what people would imagine Armageddon would
be like. A hot piece of rock with lava everywhere, a place life like us
couldn’t imagine to live in.
The best theory to why the moon
was created was a large asteroid the size of mars smashed into the earth
sending materials and gas everywhere. Soon this whole mess was pulled in by the
earth’s gravitational pull and created the moon.
It has been theorized that water
came to earth because of an asteroid of comet. The theory is that when the
earth was created it was too volcanic and hot to have any water stay there. Any
at the time would have been evaporated. They say that a comet (which consist of
gas and ices while a asteroid consist of rock) collided with and brought water
in earth’s later stage.
So even though we might dread
universal collisions with earth, it is because of these collisions that earth
and life exist today.
As for avoidance goes, the main
tactic most people know about is a deflection. But an actual deflection would
take years of preparation. And by that I don’t mean we already started,
preparation could only start when an asteroid is spotted.
