The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago was believed to be up to 16 kilometres wide. Previous research from the University of Berkley, California, believes there is evidence to suggest that non-avian dinosaurs survived around 30,000 years afterwards, and they eventually went extinct due to the 100,000 years of drastic climate change caused by the impact. Others, however, believe the beasts died out in a matter of months.
Palaeontologist Ken Lacovara previously said: “They died suddenly and were buried quickly.
“It tells us this is a moment in geological time. That’s days, weeks, maybe months.”
However, NASA has revealed that a much smaller asteroid has the ability to cause chaos on the planet.
The space agency said a space rock of just a kilometre wide has the potential to case chaos across the planet.
NASA said: “An individual’s chance of being killed by a meteorite is small, but the risk increases with the size of the impacting comet or asteroid, with the greatest risk associated with global catastrophes resulting from impacts of objects larger than 1 kilometre.”
However, the space agency moved to reassure frightened minds, stating that it is not predicting a major asteroid strike of that size for several centuries.
The space boffins said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
NASA has made great strides in discovering near-Earth objects that are over one kilometre in size, with 90 percent now accounted for.
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Their OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft is gathering information about the space rock, which is 500 metres in length.
NASA fears the asteroid, which has the potential to wipe out an entire country on Earth, could hit our planet within the next 120 years, with the next close flyby in 2135.
The mission will give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth.
But NASA reiterated, while there is a small chance Earth could be impacted, “over millions of years, of all of the planets, Bennu is most likely to hit Venus.”
