This is what the end of the world would look like: scientists reveal what will happen if asteroid Bennu collides with Earth in 2182
Scientists have predicted what would happen if Bennu were to collide with Earth.
Scientists can be sadistic people at times. Now, they’ve simulated what will happen to us all if Bennu, a hill-sized piece of space rock, indeed does end up colliding with Earth.
You’ve probably heard of the last big asteroid to hit Earth - the one that arrived 66 million years ago and spelled the end for our spiky-teethed friends, the dinosaurs. Since then, things have been relatively calm.
However, Bennu, a 500-metre wide lump of rock, has been located by the boffins and their telescopes and they’ve given it a 1 in 2,700 (or 0.04 percent) chance of hitting Earth. While that may seem small, it’s certainly not zero.
One for your calendar: a potential impact would occur in 157 years and come in September of the year 2182. There’s no need to be buying toilet rolls and tinned tuna just yet, but you have been warned.
The asteroid that whacked the dinosaurs was comparatively much bigger. While a 500-metre rock smashing into the surface of the Earth doesn’t sound like a great day for the diary, it’s a lot smaller than the 10-15km diameter of the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub.
What would happen if an asteroid hit Earth?
It doesn’t sound pretty. “Our simulations, which inject up to 400 million tons of dust into the stratosphere, show marked disruptions in climate, atmospheric chemistry, and global photosynthesis,” said Lan Dai and Axel Timmerman of Pusan National University in South Korea. “Global mean temperatures are projected to drop by 4 degrees Celsius, and global precipitation decreases by 15 percent in our simulations.”
While we cannot be certain on the effects in the medium to long term, the fossil records from Chicxulub don’t look positive. ScienceAlert writes that such a huge impact “would dim the Sun enough to interfere with photosynthesis, and hit the climate like a wrecking ball.”
As well as all that, Dai adds “unfavourable climate conditions for plants to grow” would ensue, causing “massive disruptions in global food security.”
Asteroid Bennu’s parent body was likely a salty, wet environment – one surprisingly like a lakebed on Earth. @NASA scientists drew similarities between a sample collected from Bennu by the #OSIRISREx mission & minerals from Searles Lake, a dry lake in California’s Mojave Desert. pic.twitter.com/5xRbuKE88F
— NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) February 5, 2025
As for humanity, it’s likely that the world population would survive, albeit in smaller numbers than before. While collisions are rare they are not impossible, and our ancestors likely went through such events in their time too.
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