--- title: ‘City Killer’ Sized Asteroids Might Hit Earth More Frequently Than Previously Thought | TIME description: According to data just released Tuesday, 26 large asteroids collided with Earth between 2000 and 2013, and the only thing preventing one from hitting a major city is “blind luck.” The organization distributing the data is looking for $450 million. canonical: https://time.com/video/67dF3kd8/ og:title: ‘City Killer’ Sized Asteroids Might Hit Earth More Frequently Than Previously Thought og:description: According to data just released Tuesday, 26 large asteroids collided with Earth between 2000 and 2013, and the only thing preventing one from hitting a major city is “blind luck.” The organization distributing the data is looking for $450 million. og:url: https://time.com/video/67dF3kd8/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/67dF3kd8/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: ‘City Killer’ Sized Asteroids Might Hit Earth More Frequently Than Previously Thought twitter:description: According to data just released Tuesday, 26 large asteroids collided with Earth between 2000 and 2013, and the only thing preventing one from hitting a major city is “blind luck.” The organization distributing the data is looking for $450 million. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/67dF3kd8/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # ‘City Killer’ Sized Asteroids Might Hit Earth More Frequently Than Previously Thought > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: ‘City Killer’ Sized Asteroids Might Hit Earth More Frequently Than Previously Thought [Watch (HLS stream): ‘City Killer’ Sized Asteroids Might Hit Earth More Frequently Than Previously Thought](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/67dF3kd8.m3u8) (2:01)  _Published 2014-04-23. According to data just released Tuesday, 26 large asteroids collided with Earth between 2000 and 2013, and the only thing preventing one from hitting a major city is “blind luck.” The organization distributing the data is looking for $450 million._ --- Jul 27, 2023 4:25 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Asteroid Expected to Pass Extremely Close to Earth Sunday](/video/3O1rZ9xX/) ### Asteroid Expected to Pass Extremely Close to Earth Sunday [Revealing Asteroids with Radar](/video/Eqp10LI1/) ### Revealing Asteroids with Radar [TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth](/video/TgSKV2RZ/) ### TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth --- ## Transcript There's a comfort in believing that asteroids don't hurdle into the Earth's atmosphere very often, but new data shows it might happen more regularly than we once thought. Asteroids hit the earth all the time. Larger ones like the one that hit about 100 years ago in Tanguska in Siberia, those hit about every couple hundred years. That wiped out an area about the size of the San Francisco Bay area. According to data just released Tuesday, 26 different asteroids collided with Earth between 2000 and 2013, and the only thing preventing an asteroid from hitting a major city is blind luck. To give you an idea of just how powerful these asteroids are, use the impact of the atomic bomb as a measuring stick. The atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima had an energy impact of 15 kilotons. The energy impact of the 26 asteroids to enter the Earth's atmosphere since 2000 ranges from one to 600 kilotons. The group behind the study is the B612 foundation. Founded by two former astronauts, B612 is hoping to raise enough money to build a space craft that will help detect incoming, threatening asteroids. Over 6. 5 years the space craft will locate and follow the trajectories of more than 90 % of asteroids larger than 140 meters. While they were doing the survey, we developed this space, capability to be able to send a spacecraft out to be able to just push the asteroid ever so slightly out of the way. The B612 foundation has estimated that a asteroid big enough to wipe out a city could hit the earth once every century. But, USA Today caught up with a scientist who thinks the real estimate is less frequent. It could be that high, Brown says, but once every 100 years is probably very near the upper range of numbers. The true number is probably closer to once in every 500 years, or even once in every 1, 000 years. According to Space News, the B612 Foundation is hoping to raise $ 450 million to build a spacecraft, which it hopes to launch in 2018. 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