Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 6/4/2004

Question
Sir, will there be any chance of our planet earth collide with an asteroid or any other planet in space..?

Answer
Hello eby,
Why yes of course! The earth could very well be hit by an asteroid but not by a planet.
Also your question leads to another interesting fossil record related to the dinosaurs and an asteroid impact as you will see later in the answer.
However, as the solar system ages, most of the rogue asteroids are progressively either gobbled up by the great guys of the system such as jupiter and saturn and uranus or by the big don of the system himself, our sun.
Even then scientists predict from past observation of mass extinctions that a direct hit by an asteroid is very much likely at the rate 1 per 65 million years.
The last one hit in central america and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The ash layer from the blast called the K-T (Cretacious-Tertiary boundary?) boundary is to be found all over the earth as a sort of solid fossil evidence of the havoc it caused.
The layer is particularly rich in one element found in meteors of the iron-rock type.
try to find out about the k-t boundary on the web.
Jayen