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TUCSON - New research by a Tucson scientist reveals shocking details about asteroids and our planet. The study shows certain asteroids could be more destructive than we ever thought.

Elisabetta Pierazzo, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, studied asteroids ranging from 500 meters to one kilometer. Unlike the one that killed the dinosaurs, these asteroids would not cause mass extinction.

"There is a chance that it could be a large enough impact to destabilize current civilization. And there's never been a quantification of what does that mean," Pierazzo said.

Pierazzo's study shows what might happen if one of these medium size asteroids landed in the ocean. She created simulations, looked at the data and found that kind of impact would have world-wide repercussions.

"You're going to throw a lot of water vapor and, with that, you're going to throw a lot of chloride and bromide into the upper atmosphere," Pierazzo said.

Those chemicals could destroy at least 60 percent of the ozone layer all over the world. People and plants would have little natural protection from harmful ultraviolet rays, forcing us to stay inside or wear sunscreen and hats all the time. However, plants and fish would be stuck unprotected in the sun.

"We are going to have less food to eat and it's going to be a major problem for this world," Pierazzo said.

Edward Beshore, Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Principle Investigator for the Catalina Sky Survey, spends his days looking for asteroids.

"Most of the objects we find are about 100 to 200 meters across," Beshore said.

As for the asteroids from Pierazzo's study, Beshore says they spot about 50 a year. A small number of them come within five million miles of the earth's orbit. Those can be unpredictable.

"If they cross the orbit of the earth, they are potentially hazardous asteroids that we really need to keep our eye on," Beshore said.

In all, there are a couple hundred of those potentially hazardous, medium sized (500m to 1 km) asteroids out there. On average, asteroids that size hit the earth about every 25,000 to one million years.