What if Ceres, the largest of all known asteroids, hit Earth?
Our planet has suffered some devatating impacts in the past, but this one would surpass nearly all of them!
Ceres is the largest 'asteroid' in our solar system, big enough that it's actually classified as a dwarf planet, like Pluto. Even though it never strays from the asteroid field, what would happen if the unthinkable occurred, and it swept in to impact with Earth?
Of the over 4,500 known comets and the nearly 1.5 million asteroids we've discovered, none pose a particularly high risk to our planet, at least not in the next 100 years or so. However, there are objects out there that, if they wandered way too close to us, would result in catastrophic impacts — literally — to either a localized region of Earth or potentially the entire planet.
What happened when the Chelyabinsk meteorite exploded over Russia, when the Chicxulub impactor slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, and when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter? Plus, what if the interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua, asteroid Bennu, or even dwarf planet Ceres struck Earth?