When will the Earth explode?

Hmm, that’s an interesting (and slightly scary) question. The only reason that Earth may ‘explode’ is if a meteorite the size of the moon impacted the Earth. Large meteorites have impacted Earth before, for example 66 million years ago and that meteorite was probably at least 10-80 km in diameter. That impact caused the outpouring of huge volumes of hot liquid magma in lots of places on Earth’s surface and changed Earth’s climate. The dinosaurs and many reptiles couldn’t cope with those changes and became extinct, which then enabled the mammals to flourish.

Here in Tasmania we also have craters associated with the impact of Meteorites – for example Darwin Crater in southwest Tasmania. That impact was probably around 820,000 years ago.

Interestingly, scientists are now using sediment cores taken from the Darwin crater to find out how the climate changed more than 20,000 years ago.