For a few days in mid-February, headlines around the world buzzed about the potential for an asteroid to hit the Earth in 2032 — specifically, asteroid 2024 YR4. The chance of this impact rose to a high of 3.1 per cent on Feb. 18.

The number has since dropped to near zero, but this news was a real-life Don’t Look Up moment, and a stark reminder of the threat that asteroid impacts pose to life on Earth.

As a planetary geologist, my research focuses on meteorite impact craters, the scars of large asteroid and cometary impacts in Earth’s past.

There are countless numbers of asteroids and an unknown number of comets throughout our solar system. Most of these objects date back to the very beginnings of our solar system, around 4.5 billion years ago.

Research has identified approximately 200 locations where these asteroids or comets have struck the Earth in the past to form meteorite impact craters. It’s very rare that planetary geologists can tell whether it was an asteroid or comet that hit.

One of the most famous of these 200 or so impact craters is the 200 km diameter Chicxulub impact crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This impact wiped out 65 per cent of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.

One of the most recent and best-preserved craters on Earth is the 1.2 km in diameter Meteor Crater in Arizona, which formed 50,000 years ago.

Two hundred craters over 4.5 billion years hardly........

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