About 66 million years ago a massive asteroid collided with the Earth near the

Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This impact ended the era of the dinosaurs and

resulted in one of the greatest species extinctions in history. That large asteroid wasn't the first to hit the Earth, nor will it be the last.

Today, many people are actively trying to ensure that such an event never happens again.

Learn more about asteroid impacts, and how much we should really worry about them on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. When our solar system was formed, it started with a big cloud of gas of hydrogen and

helium and dust made of heavier elements. Most of that ended up coalescing through

gravity into our sun.

After the sun began to ignite via nuclear fusion,

the solar wind-decrated blew out most of the lighter gases still lingering in the solar system.

The heavier elements also started to coalesce

via gravity and electrostatic attraction. Most of these heavier particles form the

planets and the various moons. However, not everything ended up as a planet or a moon. In fact, there was still quite

a bit of matter flying around the solar system. Millions and millions of pieces of varying

size never became part of a larger body and are still zipping around the moon. of the

pieces of varying size never became part of a larger body and are still zipping around the sun today.

Over the 4.5 billion years, the solar system has existed.

These leftover pieces have on rare occasions collided with each other and larger bodies.

In the early solar system this was happening quite frequently.

However, every time a small hunk of rock collided with a larger body,

one less hunk of rock was floating around.

Fast forward to today, and there are still millions and millions of bits of rock floating around in the solar system.

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