This would seriously mess up your plans for dinner.
0.oMany on the forums are too young (or weren't around yet) to remember the multiple Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impacts on Jupiter in 1994. The comet broke into some 21 or so major fragments, and the impacts created tremendous fireballs in the Jovian atmosphere that were several times the diameter of Earth.
Had one of those fragments hit the Earth instead, it would've been sort of like shooting a plum with a high-powered rifle - except the "bullet" would have been travelling a LOT faster.
Here is a video of one of the fragments hitting Jupiter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zNuT4dbdjU
The moon Io is the bright circle to the right.
The fragments of the comet were up to 1.2 miles in diameter, and were travelling at approximately 60km/sec (37.3miles/sec) when they impacted the surface.
A standard NATO-issue 5.56 round for the M16 rifle travels at approximately 3,250ft/sec, or 1km/sec - 1/60th the speed of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet fragments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker-Levy_9
Yes.0.o
Do we have any sort of plan whatsoever for what to do if something like this is en-route to earth?
Like in the movie armageddon? Pretty sure that even a team of space-trained oilfield roughnecks couldn't do anything more than turn it into a big glass asteroid.Since we have enough nukes to turn the planet into a glass parking lot then I would hope that we would at least have a method of destroying an asteroid... But I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't.
Atmosphere?Watching it I was wondering what made the meteor so HOT before impact? Dang thing was glowing red.
Atmosphere?
Jordan Sparks said:Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air
Can't live, can't breathe with no air
It is a simulation of an asteroid impact on Earth. Last I checked Earth had an atmosphere.I wasn't aware there was any interplanetary atmosphere.
The Ivy Mike shot was around 10 megatons. The crater was 2 km wide and 50 m deep.
and that was after vaporizing the island called Elugelab. You can see the crater(s) from alot of the 43 atomic tests at Eniwetok Atoll using Google Earth.
Here's the Ivy Mike video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmlysT9e2Ls
by Duane Benson
by Jake Hertz
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by Duane Benson