These small objects usually burn up high in the atmosphere, producing the shooting stars you may have seen while looking up at the night sky.

But astronomers are always on the lookout for bigger asteroids, especially the ones that may be on course to strike our planet.

While rare, these collisions with rocks from deep space do happen and the results can be downright terrifying.

An asteroid just seven meters in diameter will explode with the power roughly equal to the atomic bomb that was used on Hiroshima, leveling buildings up to a mile away.

A larger one hundred meter diameter asteroid has more power than the largest nuclear weapon ever tested and could level an entire city!

But there are even bigger asteroids out in space.

And a run in with one of these would have a truly global impact.

An insanely giant asteroid, one around ten kilometers in diameter, would create an impact crater one hundred and eighty kilometers wide and twenty kilometers deep.

Beyond just the impact it would cause worldwide earthquakes and mega tsunamis over one hundred meters high.

Dust and ash thrown up into the atmosphere would cover the surface of the earth for years.

A massive die off of plants and animals would follow.

Basically the end-of-life as we know it.

And this has happened before.

An asteroid of roughly that size is what we think killed the dinosaurs.

And if an enormous asteroid the size of the earth were to hit, the planet would be completely obliterated, leaving nothing but the earth's core and creating a new asteroid belt between Venus and Mars.

But don't worry too much.

Giant asteroids the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs only hit the earth about every fifty to one hundred million years.

Of course, the last one was sixty-six million years ago so I guess you could say we are due.