Is our earth vulnerable

[mountainboo]

I look at the stars sometimes and wonder how vulnerable we truly are. Does anybody know, what are the chances of a large meteor strike? what are the chances of the sun dying or infact completely exploding into space? What are the chances of earth spining out of its orbit? And what are the chances of earths atmosphere diminishing? Alot to answer I know. Just some general idea would be gratefully received. Thanks

[Clanad]

Astrophysicists estimeate that an asteroid named Apophis, which is about 140 metres long, has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036. An asteroid that size could take out an entire city or region and according to one source, the odds of a civilization destroying impact in any single year range from about 1 in 100,000 to about 1 in 300,000.

The chances of our sun dying are 100%... but not for many millions of years...The other questions require sheer speculation...

[mountainboo]

Thanks clanad, so I guess there will always be a possibility of something catastrophic happening but to put it in perspective it's hopefully only a minutly slim chance.

[Essentially]

Here's another take on what you ask:

How much credibility can one hold (do you hold for that matter) in the current 2012 prophecy that has hit the Internet? Not only that, but books have been written about it too. And just to give you an indicator; imagine this and see if you consider it credible:

In the lower-5th dimension there is a war going on. Bad aliens are making us do bad things; that's why some of us are bad, whilst good aliens are fighting the bad aliens so they don't mis-lead us. Come the year 2012 and the prophecy will come to pass that the bad aliens will be cast out and the good aliens will rule our lives instead and all will be peace. What should be throught about here is that (apparently) we never ruled our own minds in the first place.

Google 'what's going to happen in the year 2012' .

According to that ... there is nothing to worry about and everything is going to change; all evil will be gone. That, of course, leaves the option of how gullable or how far a mind can stretch before it says either 'woopee!' or 'enough already!'

Just for the record and personally speaking; let me just say I am not a follower (if I say any more I might just *literally* ROFL. ;-)

[shoddy]

Our sun has enough material to last another 5 billon years
however the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with the Milky way in about 3 billion years so you need not worry about the sun going red giant as our galaxy has date with destiny

[jake-the-peg]

The huge distances between stars mean that colliding galaxies are not quite the same as say colliding cars have a look here:

http://www.astrographics.com/cgi-bin/ase/ase.c gi?affiliate=&mode=display&gallery=1&type=&col or=&keywords=&page=10