https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh3I3aTTD3o
couldn't help laughing when he mentioned it would pass by in sept. which happens to be hunting season. hmmm.
https://storiesonline.net/s/34601/aftermath
by the way this is one of my all time favorites and one of the best ever post here. imho
when he mentioned it would pass by in sept
Unless it doesn't. Odds of 1 in 7,299 ... which in and of itself is different, why didn't they just say 1 in 7,300 ... still means there is a chance.
I play Texas Hold-em. Odds of getting pocket A's are 1 in 221. So while not rare, in a normal four hour session where you average 40 hands per hour, you shouldn't expect to see it 5 or 6 times. Except I've seen that happen.
Getting quads is 1 in 4,165. A straight flush is 1 in 72,192. I've had quads many times, and several straight flushes over the years. So again, it IS possible.
What I found interesting was that he kept saying, okay, if it DOES happen to hit Earth, then it'll probably hit water, since 70% of the Earth is water, and unless it hit near a coastal city, it probably wouldn't affect anyone. And he then mentioned that 95% of the population lives on only 10% of the land. And then just sort of said, but if it did happen and the odds of this happening are super, very, very, low ... then we're not prepared to handle it.
And left it at that.
So I did a little digging. Back in 2013, there was an article on Space.com about a similar sized rock. And that article said you're looking at about a 2.4 megaton explosion, basically capable of leveling everything within about 800 to 850 square miles.
Okay, it hits in the middle of Antarctica or the Sahara Desert, big whoop. But it hits Moscow - that's most of the city gone. That's all of New York City twice over. That's all of Los Angeles. All of London. A third of Perth, a fourth of Melbourne. All of Tokyo.
The only good thing is we know it's coming. The scenario where an asteroid we did NOT know was coming is something that could start WW3 if it hit a populated era. (Or for that matter, a scientific event gone wrong, as mentioned by John Ringo in one of his series.)
and unless it hit near a coastal city, it probably wouldn't affect anyone.
The speaker's demeanor annoyed me, so I bailed on his presentation. All I heard was him regurgitating facts from other sources and his opinion seemed to be a "let's stick our heads in the sand point of view". If he made the above statement in the manner he used in the initial minute or so of his presentation, I would say he doesn't know what he is talking about.
A water strike does not have to be near a city cause damage. The strike hitting the ocean floor can trigger earth quakes along the boundaries of that tectonic plate.
Consider a water strike a hundred miles or so off of San Francisco. Such a strike could result in the Pacific Plate shifting which in turn could result in major earthquakes along the west coasts of Canada, the US, Mexico, Central America, and South America.
The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 was caused by the earth shifting along a single fault line and it caused extensive damage throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. The scope of the loss of life and property damage of that earthquake would be relatively minor compared to what would result if all the fault lines along the eastern boundary of the Pacific Plate were to shift and result in earthquakes.
A water strike does not have to be near a city cause damage. The strike hitting the ocean floor can trigger earth quakes along the boundaries of that tectonic plate.
Also, tsunamis, possibly megatsunamis. The impact will displace a lot of water, possibly the entire water column. Out in the deep ocean, it wouldn't look like much a shallow wave hundreds of miles long, but when it hits the shallow water near land the front of the wave slows down and the back of the wave starts to pile in and it can rise to extreme heights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatsunami
I know. It is earthquakes moving the ocean floor up and down that generate the tsunamis.
ETA: Material falling into the ocean will generate a tsunami, however the amount of energy transferred to the water is relatively small when compared to an earthquake.
I know. It is earthquakes moving the ocean floor up and down that generate the tsunamis.
Megatunamis generally result from the sudden displacement of a large volume of solid material into the ocean, such as a landslide or a asteroid impacts.
A massive landslide can not only move the entire water column, it can create an air pocket at the bottom of the water column.
A mid ocean asteroid impact could create a mega tsunami ripple directly, even before any earthquakes are triggered.
A mid ocean asteroid impact could create a mega tsunami ripple directly, even before any earthquakes are triggered.
It would depend upon how big the asteroid was. Something the size of what could hit us this fall probably wouldn't create much of a tsunami because it would never make it to the surface. It'd explode in the atmosphere, and while there would be something generated, probably nothing more than 500 miles away would notice. (And tough shit if your island was only 2 or 3 miles away, everything on it would be flattened and you'd probably be dead.)
You get something big enough that it DOES make it to the surface, presuming you're not talking about a small meteorite but an actual decent sized asteroid - maybe half a mile in diameter - still wouldn't make that much of a mess. Certainly it would create the tsunami before it triggered earthquakes, but we're only talking about a matter of seconds here between those events, because the earthquakes would start when whatever was left of the meteorite hits the ocean floor and punches a hole in it.
Meteor, 804 meters in diameter, moving at 22 km/sec.
Volume is 2.78 x 10 to the 8th cubic meters. Average density is 3.0 grams per cubic cm. If I've done my math right, that's 834 metric tons of asteroid. Hitting with a kinetic energy force of 201,000,000 Mj. That's 2.01 million megajoules.
Effectively you just hit the ocean floor with the equivalent of a 48 kiloton nuclear bomb - so three times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. We'd feel it, but it really wouldn't be that bad unless you were directly under it, or it hit right on the ring of fire.
Oh, and again, that's half a mile in diameter.
By comparison, and being conservative, because we don't actually KNOW how big it was, the rock that hit Chicxulub would have been the equivalent of at LEAST an 11 million megaton device. It's a wonder that didn't kill all the life on the planet. (Oh, wait ... it pretty much did.)
Footfall & Lucifer's Hammer, both by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, use the "Comet of Doom" trope. They may have been the first to use this in a modern setting as both books date to the 1970s.
Both are very good reads if you like the science fiction / post apocalypse genre.
The horrible 1979 movie Meteor ripped off elements of both books and failed badly.
Major asteroid impact on land would result in a huge crater, which would last for millions of years (not as a crater that large, but something visible from the air).
So, we know that these do not occur on land more than once a century at most. Asteroid impacts on the entire land area of Earth are more likely than an impact near a large city in proportion to the % of the total land area covered by cities. That is much less than one part per million.
OTOH, an asteroid collision in water, as mentioned by several writers, could be a disaster to several major cities at once.
Just to add some data:
Ries Impact, the impactor had probably a diameter of 4,900 ft causing a crater of about 15 miles diameter, the resulting explosion had the power of 1.8 million Hiroshima bombs.
HM.
Large impactors like the one you mentioned striking land are relatively easy to identify. Just look for a crater and the related evidence. If such an impactor hit a stream, the crater may now be a lake and not as easily identified.
However, how do you find a crater in the sea floor. I wonder how many large impactors have been water strikes.
So I did a little digging. Back in 2013, there was an article on Space.com about a similar sized rock. And that article said you're looking at about a 2.4 megaton explosion, basically capable of leveling everything within about 800 to 850 square miles.
Okay, it hits in the middle of Antarctica
That's a lot of potentially flash-melted glacier.
That's a lot of potentially flash-melted glacier.
Now that would be a good start point for a new PA story. Almost instant significant rise of the sea levels world wide.
A good portion of which would end up as airborne vapor (clouds). I'm thinking sea level rise would be secondary to the affects on earth's weather. A sudden impulse of that much water vapor couldn't help but make a relatively sudden impact on the earth's albedo.
Water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas. Particulates in the atmosphere from a ground strike can block the sun and cause cooling, but a large glacial or especially a water strike could cause significant warming in the short term.
Water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas.
Depends on where in the atmosphere the water vapor ends up. Clear water vapor in the stratosphere would have a warming effect. In the troposphere, increased absolute humidity, leading to increased cloud cover would have a cooling effect.
Depends on where in the atmosphere the water vapor ends up. Clear water vapor in the stratosphere would have a warming effect. In the troposphere, increased absolute humidity, leading to increased cloud cover would have a cooling effect.
Which isn't to mention water vapor generally filters in/out of the atmosphere in a matter of days/weeks. It doesn't have the lifecycle of CO2 and other gasses.
Part of why groups aren't trying to shut down cooling towers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo
Particulates in the atmosphere from a ground strike can block the sun and cause cooling, but a large glacial or especially a water strike could cause significant warming in the short term.
Part of the earth's albedo is governed by cloud coverage. It may or may not cause warming. The greenhouse effect requires the energy to be trapped, but with sufficient cloud cover, insufficient energy would make to the ground for it to be trapped in the first place.
The so called 'climate scientists' never seem to comment on that for some reason. Thermodynamics has a pesky way of throwing wrenches in the world ending global warming hypothesis.
That is not to say the correction isn't going to suck hard core.
As for this scenario, which way it goes (warming or cooling) would be governed by the quantity of vapor put into the atmosphere and how fast it was done.