Asteroids In our solar system today there are over 30,000 asteroids flying in all directions colliding with other asteroids and planets, without worrying about the destruction they might cause. Our planet Earth sits right in the middle of all this action and is subject to total extinction of all life on the planet if a large enough asteroid crosses its path. Every single asteroid has the potential to erase thousands of years of history and wipe out the human race, as we know it. Asteroids are large or small pieces of rock and metal that fly through space at speeds of up to 80,000 km/h. These pieces were believed to have formed millions of years ago during the "big bang". These rocks did not form any planets and were stuck floating in space on their own or in the gravitation of the asteroid belt. This asteroid belt is located approximately 300 million miles from the Sun and contains thousands of asteroids; some are miles in diameter. Another theory about the formation of asteroids is that a planet once existed between Mars and Jupiter and after many years it exploded into thousands of pieces that still revolve around the sun in the form of an asteroid belt. Other asteroids form when large meteors collide with larger asteroids, creating smaller ones. These meteors can also collide with planets, knocking off chunks of crust into space. Ceres is believed to be the largest asteroid that was in space at one time. Ceres was believed to be 600 miles across and made up 1/3 of the total mass of all asteroids. Ceres was the first asteroid discovered and was found in 1801. There are two main types of asteroids; the former dominate the external part of the belt and are rich in carbon, the latter group are located inside the belt and are rich in minerals. The average surface temperature of an asteroid is around -73 degrees C. Many people don't know that over 50,000 small asteroids called meteors hit Earth every year. These meteors are the outer layer of larger asteroids that have been chipped away at or are the surface of other planets that have broken off from their positions when hit by larger asteroids. Asteroids sometimes align with Earth when meteors flying through space collide with other asteroids in the belt causing pieces to break off and go in all directions. ...... in the center of the map ...... wide and is within 8 million kilometers of Earth. It is very likely that a large asteroid will hit Earth in the future due to the planet's past experience with asteroid collisions. Scientists estimate that an asteroid larger than 800 m in diameter hits Earth every million years, and a smaller one every century. An asteroid larger than 1 km would mean the end of about 30% of the world's population. An asteroid of this size would be equivalent to the explosion of 2 million bombs in Hiroshima. This explosion would cause the destruction of all living creatures within a hundred-mile radius and would block the Sun with dust and rock particles for weeks or even months. Asteroids are probably the deadliest force our solar system can produce, one hit could send man back to the dark ages and would kill almost the entire population of our planet. It is for this reason that scientists should focus more on understanding asteroids and doing more research into defending our planet. At the moment we only know where a fraction of the asteroids present are located. The asteroid that could destroy our planet could be just a year away and we don't even know it exists.