What to do if a giant meteor is coming at you

[questionposter]

If there's a giant meteor, here's what you should do:

Not nuke it. There is no air in space, so there is nothing to carry a powerful directed shockwave, a nuclear weapon would simply be a burst of high energy radiation and enough of them at once may partially strip away the ozone or more.

Instead, develop a very powerful fragmentation bomb, a bomb that will generate shrapnel powerful tear through the meteor and break it into tinier pieces. It will likely take more than one, and there will very likely still be some big chunks left-over, but the many smaller pieces will burn up in the atmosphere and not cause so much damage upon impact.

However, it doesn't stop here. All the shrapnel from the bombs and more of the many meteor pieces will cause friction upon entering the atmosphere. Statistics going back to the early stages of Earth show that when the Earth was being constantly bombarded by hundreds of meteors, it's temperature rose a fair amount due to those meteors. So, to prepare for the millions of pieces creating tremendous amounts of friction in the atmosphere, cool the Earth down. There aren't many ways to do this that I can think of, but perhaps by trying to suck up as much green-house gas as possible and storing it as a liquid underground or in special facilities, less heat will be trapped in Earth, which is actually something scientists were considering a while ago when looking at the projections for what the temperature of the Earth will be later in this century.

Also, this is another reason to go green

Edited March 20, 2012 by questionposter

[CaptainPanic]

Are we talking "practical" (modern-day technology, and a budget that is maximum 50x the world's GDP), or are we talking "theoretical" (sci-fi, and unlimited budget/energy)?

[mertol]

I thought they are going to divert it by placing a spacecraft near it so its gravity would change the orbit.

[Spyman]

A nuclear blast is fully able to fragment, vaporize and/or deflect an asteroid. However bombing it with the sole purpose to break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event, an Earth killer will release enough energy into the atmosphere to wipe us out even if all pieces are small enough to burn up before they reach the ground.

 

Destruction methods seems more like a last ditch emergency rescue when time and/or economy is not sufficient to save us, if we find out about the asteroid in time I would opt for a safer avoidance strategy. We only have to slow it down enough to reach Earth's solar orbit about sevent minutes later for it to miss us.

 

Interesting article in Wikipedia on the subject:

 

Asteroid mitigation strategies are "planetary defense" methods by which near-Earth objects could be diverted, preventing potentially catastrophic impact events. A sufficiently large impact would cause massive tsunamis or (by placing large quantities of dust into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight) an impact winter, or both. A collision between the Earth and a ~10 km object 65 million years ago is believed to have produced the Chicxulub Crater and the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

 

While the chances of such an event are no greater now than at any other time in history, there is a very high chance that one will happen eventually. Recent astronomical events (such as Shoemaker-Levy 9) have drawn attention to such a threat, and advances in technology have opened up new options to prevent them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid-impact_avoidance

[Joatmon]

I can't remember details of the official looking notice in a Sergeants Mess concerning nuclear attack. It was a fairly long list of serious looking things to do. The final instruction was "Roll into a ball with your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye". Perhaps it might be relevant if a giant asteroid was about to hit you!

Edited March 20, 2012 by Joatmon

[questionposter]

A nuclear blast is fully able to fragment, vaporize and/or deflect an asteroid. However bombing it with the sole purpose to break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event, an Earth killer will release enough energy into the atmosphere to wipe us out even if all pieces are small enough to burn up before they reach the ground.

 

Destruction methods seems more like a last ditch emergency rescue when time and/or economy is not sufficient to save us, if we find out about the asteroid in time I would opt for a safer avoidance strategy. We only have to slow it down enough to reach Earth's solar orbit about sevent minutes later for it to miss us.

 

Interesting article in Wikipedia on the subject:

 

Asteroid mitigation strategies are "planetary defense" methods by which near-Earth objects could be diverted, preventing potentially catastrophic impact events. A sufficiently large impact would cause massive tsunamis or (by placing large quantities of dust into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight) an impact winter, or both. A collision between the Earth and a ~10 km object 65 million years ago is believed to have produced the Chicxulub Crater and the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

 

While the chances of such an event are no greater now than at any other time in history, there is a very high chance that one will happen eventually. Recent astronomical events (such as Shoemaker-Levy 9) have drawn attention to such a threat, and advances in technology have opened up new options to prevent them.

http://en.wikipedia....mpact_avoidance

 

Lol, "there's a very high chance one will happen eventually". So between now an infinity, one is bound to happen.

 

But, think about how much energy the sun releases and how life has been thriving for 3.8 billion years, how would a meteor that's not even a considerable fraction of the Earth's size carry that much energy even if broken up? I think the potential energy would still be pretty great, but it would release that energy in the form of kinetic energy as it ran into the air and caused friction, but it's still a lot of energy so there's a good chance it may heat up the Earth's atmosphere considerably.

 

I suppose a nuclear bomb "could" vaporize parts of an asteroid,d which would likely cool down very quickly anyway, but the way a nuclear bomb packs such a powerful punch is because of the plating design in directing a powerful shockwave, so not only could that angle be off, but there's no air for it to be directed in, so the "shockwave" if it can even be called that in outer-space with nothing around will likely disperse at a much greater rate.

 

 

[questionposter]

A nuclear blast is fully able to fragment, vaporize and/or deflect an asteroid. However bombing it with the sole purpose to break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event, an Earth killer will release enough energy into the atmosphere to wipe us out even if all pieces are small enough to burn up before they reach the ground.

 

Destruction methods seems more like a last ditch emergency rescue when time and/or economy is not sufficient to save us, if we find out about the asteroid in time I would opt for a safer avoidance strategy. We only have to slow it down enough to reach Earth's solar orbit about sevent minutes later for it to miss us.

 

Interesting article in Wikipedia on the subject:

 

Asteroid mitigation strategies are "planetary defense" methods by which near-Earth objects could be diverted, preventing potentially catastrophic impact events. A sufficiently large impact would cause massive tsunamis or (by placing large quantities of dust into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight) an impact winter, or both. A collision between the Earth and a ~10 km object 65 million years ago is believed to have produced the Chicxulub Crater and the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

 

While the chances of such an event are no greater now than at any other time in history, there is a very high chance that one will happen eventually. Recent astronomical events (such as Shoemaker-Levy 9) have drawn attention to such a threat, and advances in technology have opened up new options to prevent them.

http://en.wikipedia....mpact_avoidance

 

Lol, "there's a very high chance one will happen eventually". So between now an infinity, one is bound to happen.

 

But, think about how much energy the sun releases and how life has been thriving for 3.8 billion years, how would a meteor that's not even a considerable fraction of the Earth's size carry that much energy even if broken up? I think the potential energy would still be pretty great, but it would release that energy in the form of kinetic energy as it ran into the air and caused friction, but it's still a lot of energy so there's a good chance it may heat up the Earth's atmosphere considerably, but probably wouldn't wipe anything out if it's mostly just small pieces. In fact, if it is in small pieces, then it's basically the sunlight analogy, it's many little bundles of energy contributing to many little areas of heat at a time.

 

I suppose a nuclear bomb could vaporize parts of an asteroid, but the way a nuclear bomb packs such a powerful punch is because of the plating design in directing a powerful shockwave, so not only could that angle be off, but there's no air for it to be directed in, so the "shockwave" if it can even be called that in outer-space with nothing around will likely disperse at a much greater rate and render it less effective.

Edited March 24, 2012 by questionposter

[Spyman]

Lol, "there's a very high chance one will happen eventually". So between now an infinity, one is bound to happen.

What is so funny with an assured catastrophe?

 

 

But, think about how much energy the sun releases and how life has been thriving for 3.8 billion years, how would a meteor that's not even a considerable fraction of the Earth's size carry that much energy even if broken up? I think the potential energy would still be pretty great, but it would release that energy in the form of kinetic energy as it ran into the air and caused friction, but it's still a lot of energy so there's a good chance it may heat up the Earth's atmosphere considerably, but probably wouldn't wipe anything out if it's mostly just small pieces. In fact, if it is in small pieces, then it's basically the sunlight analogy, it's many little bundles of energy contributing to many little areas of heat at a time.

Your argument sounds like you think a blast from a shotgun is harmless to you, because you have survived the sunlight for your whole life.

 

The amount of energy released by a single large collision or many small collisions is essentially the same, given the physics of kinetic and potential energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid-impact_avoidance

 

 

I suppose a nuclear bomb could vaporize parts of an asteroid, but the way a nuclear bomb packs such a powerful punch is because of the plating design in directing a powerful shockwave, so not only could that angle be off, but there's no air for it to be directed in, so the "shockwave" if it can even be called that in outer-space with nothing around will likely disperse at a much greater rate and render it less effective.

I don't think such nuclear bombs are supposed to explode far from the asteroid, more likely they are set to detonate on impact or inside it.

 

Detonating a nuclear explosion above the surface (or on the surface or beneath it) of an NEO would be one option, with the blast vaporizing part of the surface of the object and nudging it off course with the reaction. This is a form of nuclear pulse propulsion. Even if not completely vaporized, the resulting reduction of mass from the blast combined with the radiation blast and rocket exhaust effect from ejecta could produce positive results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid-impact_avoidance

Edited March 26, 2012 by Spyman

[questionposter]

What is so funny with an assured catastrophe?

It's that scientists are trying to sound smart but really have no idea when one is going to happen.

 

 

 

Your argument sounds like you think a blast from a shotgun is harmless to you, because you have survived the sunlight for your whole life.

 

The amount of energy released by a single large collision or many small collisions is essentially the same, given the physics of kinetic and potential energy.

http://en.wikipedia....mpact_avoidance

 

Sunlight, for the most part, is relatively harmless. It's still more energy than some meteor, but it's how the energy is distributed. If the meteor can be broken up into millions of small pieces, then the energy will be the same, but the energy will get transferred via heat and air-friction rather than a sudden kinetic shock that would have enough concentrated force to shatter the crust.

 

 

 

I don't think such nuclear bombs are supposed to explode far from the asteroid, more likely they are set to detonate on impact or inside it.

 

Detonating a nuclear explosion above the surface (or on the surface or beneath it) of an NEO would be one option, with the blast vaporizing part of the surface of the object and nudging it off course with the reaction. This is a form of nuclear pulse propulsion. Even if not completely vaporized, the resulting reduction of mass from the blast combined with the radiation blast and rocket exhaust effect from ejecta could produce positive results.

http://en.wikipedia....mpact_avoidance

 

Ok, well that would make more sense if it was inside it, I guess if it was inside the shockwave would be carried by the meteor fragments, but there's still a downside: The fragments of the meteor would become radioactive and would introduce radiation into the atmosphere upon entry.

[Spyman]

It's that scientists are trying to sound smart but really have no idea when one is going to happen.

I interpret it as they try to point out a serious threat without sounding like doomsday prophets.

 

 

Sunlight, for the most part, is relatively harmless. It's still more energy than some meteor, but it's how the energy is distributed. If the meteor can be broken up into millions of small pieces, then the energy will be the same, but the energy will get transferred via heat and air-friction rather than a sudden kinetic shock that would have enough concentrated force to shatter the crust.

First I would like you to validate your bold claim that: "Sunlight ... is ... more energy than some meteor".

 

Prove it, assume the meteor consists of mostly rocky material, had a diameter of 10 km and a relative impact velocity of 60 km/s against Earth.

 

Please show us how the total solar energy absorbed by Earth in a few seconds is more than the kinetic energy it would release in the atmosphere.

 

 

My rough estimate says it would release around one millioooooon times more energy than the recieved sunlight for 20 seconds.

 

 

Secondly, the deadliness of an killer asteroid impact is not due to its capability to penetrate and shatter the Earth's crust at one local site.

 

The danger is their ability to on global scale affect the whole Earth's climate by injecting very large quantities of dust and small particles into the atmosphere causing a long period of nuclear winter or by increased heating to an longstanding uninhabitable temperature.

 

Various studies and simulations have been made and the general consensus seems to be that the dangerously threshold diameter is between 1 and 2 km, where sizes above 10 km would ensure humanity to be completely destroyed, larger sizes of hundreds of kilometers can vaporize all the Earth's oceans.

 

I am not an expert on asteroids or impacts and there is not likely anyone that to one hundred percent can guarantee their predicted outcome and its difference between one large asteroid or many small pieces. But everything I have read about the subject, from general public information to more advanced scientific articles made by professionals, consistently agrees that breaking it up into smaller pieces won't help and might even make it worse.

 

So, once again I will ask you to provide evidence, please give us one quote and a link to any creditable source claiming that breaking up an asteroid larger than 10 km in diameter to smaller pieces before it would hit Earth could save the human race from armageddon.

 

Because I am simply not going to take your word for it.

 

 

Ok, well that would make more sense if it was inside it, I guess if it was inside the shockwave would be carried by the meteor fragments, but there's still a downside: The fragments of the meteor would become radioactive and would introduce radiation into the atmosphere upon entry.

I never claimed that nuclear bombs would be without drawbacks, I said it could be used to: "fragment, vaporize and/or deflect an asteroid".

 

The ultimate goal would obviously not be to fragment the asteroid but to make it MISS Earth completely.

(If an attempt with nuclear weapons should fail it would not be good and could certainly become worse.)

[michel123456]

We could put a propulsion system on our planet to alterate earth's motion and avoid the collision.

Edited March 28, 2012 by michel123456

[Spyman]

I think it's little easier to push the 'tiny' rock than the 6 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg massive 13 000 km wide blue sphere.

[michel123456]

I think it's little easier to push the 'tiny' rock than the 6 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 kg massive 13 000 km wide blue sphere.

We are indeed aboard a very heavy vehicle.

How much would you need to avoid a collision? A few seconds on the orbit would be enough I think. Unless the asteroid comes face to face ,tangential to the orbit in the opposite direction (are they such asteroids?)

Edited March 29, 2012 by michel123456

[Spyman]

We are indeed aboard a very heavy vehicle.

How much would you need to avoid a collision? A few seconds on the orbit would be enough I think. Unless the asteroid comes face to face ,tangential to the orbit in the opposite direction (are they such asteroids?)

Delay exploits the fact that both the Earth and the impactor are in orbit. An impact occurs when both reach the same point in space at the same time, or more correctly when some point on Earth's surface intersects the impactor's orbit when the impactor arrives. Since the Earth is approximately 12,750 km in diameter and moves at approx. 30 km per second in its orbit, it travels a distance of one planetary diameter in about 425 seconds, or slightly over seven minutes. Delaying, or advancing the impactor's arrival by times of this magnitude can, depending on the exact geometry of the impact, cause it to miss the Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid-impact_avoidance#Collision_avoidance_strategies

 

Asteroids usually have a direct orbit. By February 2011, astronomers have identified a mere 36 asteroids in retrograde orbits. The retrograde asteroids may be burnt-out comets.

 

Comets from the Oort cloud are much more likely than asteroids to be retrograde. Halley's Comet has a retrograde orbit around the Sun.

 

The first Kuiper belt object discovered to have a retrograde orbit is 2008 KV42.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_motion#Asteroids.2C_comets.2C_and_Kuiper_belt_objects

[questionposter]

I interpret it as they try to point out a serious threat without sounding like doomsday prophets.

 

 

 

First I would like you to validate your bold claim that: "Sunlight ... is ... more energy than some meteor".

 

Prove it, assume the meteor consists of mostly rocky material, had a diameter of 10 km and a relative impact velocity of 60 km/s against Earth.

 

Please show us how the total solar energy absorbed by Earth in a few seconds is more than the kinetic energy it would release in the atmosphere.

 

 

My rough estimate says it would release around one millioooooon times more energy than the recieved sunlight for 20 seconds.

 

 

Secondly, the deadliness of an killer asteroid impact is not due to its capability to penetrate and shatter the Earth's crust at one local site.

 

The danger is their ability to on global scale affect the whole Earth's climate by injecting very large quantities of dust and small particles into the atmosphere causing a long period of nuclear winter or by increased heating to an longstanding uninhabitable temperature.

 

Various studies and simulations have been made and the general consensus seems to be that the dangerously threshold diameter is between 1 and 2 km, where sizes above 10 km would ensure humanity to be completely destroyed, larger sizes of hundreds of kilometers can vaporize all the Earth's oceans.

 

I am not an expert on asteroids or impacts and there is not likely anyone that to one hundred percent can guarantee their predicted outcome and its difference between one large asteroid or many small pieces. But everything I have read about the subject, from general public information to more advanced scientific articles made by professionals, consistently agrees that breaking it up into smaller pieces won't help and might even make it worse.

 

So, once again I will ask you to provide evidence, please give us one quote and a link to any creditable source claiming that breaking up an asteroid larger than 10 km in diameter to smaller pieces before it would hit Earth could save the human race from armageddon.

 

Because I am simply not going to take your word for it.

 

 

 

I never claimed that nuclear bombs would be without drawbacks, I said it could be used to: "fragment, vaporize and/or deflect an asteroid".

 

The ultimate goal would obviously not be to fragment the asteroid but to make it MISS Earth completely.

(If an attempt with nuclear weapons should fail it would not be good and could certainly become worse.)

 

Well if it's larger than 10 km, I don't think we have enough energy to make it miss, I guess there isn't a direct link I can find, probably because it's a weird phrase to google, but what if we look at a smaller meteor? Let's say there's a 1 foot iron meteor heading for someone's house. Let's say there isn't really any friction: The meteor hits the house causing a ton of damage.

Let's say it was broken up into small pieces: With high friction the meteor explodes into many pieces vaporize as a result of the heating from the enormous friction with the atmosphere, and thus the house is not damaged.

If the asteroid is large enough, I don't think at this point in our technology that there is anything we can do to make it miss, it's just too much mass, all I can say is that smaller pieces vaporize easier, so if the meteor can be broken into small enough pieces, they will vaporize into the atmosphere, just as a fact. I guess though it might be a problem of if we can actually break it into small enough pieces, but we once had enough weapons to destroy the world 1000 times over, I guess a meteor wouldn't be as much of a problem.

 

I can't calculate the force the meteor would carry since I don't know it's speed, I was thinking more of like 1-3km meteors, but 10 km might be more than sunlight depending on it's speed. If it was stationary and just happened to fall into Earth's orbit, I imagine it would be slower than something flung around the sun.

 

http://www.windows2u...n_at_earth.html

 

"At Earth's distance from the Sun, about 1,368 watts of energy in the form of EM radiation from the Sun fall on an area of one square meter."

And earth's surface area is about 5.1×10⁸ square km, multiplied by 1000 = so it's 5.1x10^11 square meters, multiply that by the average of watts and we get

about 6.9^14 watts, I'm guessing per second.

If there's some conversion of "watts per Newton" though I guess we can test different speeds.

I think the ratio between watts and newton meters per second is 1, but we just want newtons.

Edited March 30, 2012 by questionposter

[Spyman]

Well if it's larger than 10 km (...) but what if we look at a smaller meteor?

Well then, since I said: "break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event".

 

It seems you now have changed all your statements so they agree with everything I said in post #4.

 

 

If the asteroid is large enough, I don't think at this point in our technology that there is anything we can do to make it miss,

There will always remain a possibility for an unexpected and to fast approaching or entirely to huge rock for us to handle, so to ensure humanity's survival we need to spread out to several self supported colonies beyond this system.

 

But I think we already have the needed knowledge to deflect a threat from a large amount of ordinary asteroids, if we only get enough warning time to perform required actions. The earlier we manage to alter its trajectory the less needed change in direction is necessary.

[questionposter]

Well then, since I said: "break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event".

 

It seems you now have changed all your statements so they agree with everything I said in post #4.

 

No, it's just a fact that no matter what, if pieces are small enough, they will vaporize in the atmosphere. Nothing more too it. Not even solid iron doesn't vaporize.

 

Therefore, if we can break a meteor into pieces that small, then the Earth's crust will not shatter.

But, can we actually break a meteor over 10km into mostly pieces that small?

And what about measures against the atmosphere heating?

Edited March 31, 2012 by questionposter

[Spyman]

No, it's just a fact that no matter what, if pieces are small enough, they will vaporize in the atmosphere. Nothing more too it. Not even solid iron doesn't vaporize.

 

Therefore, if we can break a meteor into pieces that small, then the Earth's crust will not shatter.

But, can we actually break a meteor over 10km into mostly pieces that small?

And what about measures against the atmosphere heating?

And I am telling you that it does NOT matter if it "will vaporize in the atmosphere", because if it is large enough we will die anyway!

 

We are back at post #10, reread it very carefully and come back when you are able to actually provide the evidence needed to support your claim.

 

"The amount of energy released by a single large collision or many small collisions is essentially the same, given the physics of kinetic and potential energy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid-impact_avoidance

 

Both a spherical swarm with 1 000 000 000 000 000 pieces of 10 cm diameter iron balls or one single solid iron ball of 10 km diameter will kill us.

(If they hit us with sufficient speed, like Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 that hit Jupiter with a collision speed of approximately 60 km/s.)

[questionposter]

And I am telling you that it does NOT matter if it "will vaporize in the atmosphere", because if it is large enough we will die anyway!

 

We are back at post #10, reread it very carefully and come back when you are able to actually provide the evidence needed to support your claim.

 

"The amount of energy released by a single large collision or many small collisions is essentially the same, given the physics of kinetic and potential energy."

http://en.wikipedia....mpact_avoidance

 

Both a spherical swarm with 1 000 000 000 000 000 pieces of 10 cm diameter iron balls or one single solid iron ball of 10 km diameter will kill us.

(If they hit us with sufficient speed, like Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 that hit Jupiter with a collision speed of approximately 60 km/s.)

 

The difference is still how the energy is transferred. Instead of the crust of the Earth being completely shattered, you have the atmosphere warming up as well as probably a few deep impacts, but nothing that would cause mass extinction if it weren't many many km large.

I suppose if it is big enough and all the pieces were that small, then it might heat the atmosphere up to the point where the oceans boil away, which is what was happening when Earth was in its very early stages, but then again there was a lot more debris back then.

I don't see what your asking evidence for exactly...Your asking for evidence that if a piece of iron is small enough that it will vaporize? Because that's my..."claim", even though I thought it was just a fact.

http://curiosity.dis...on/meteors-word

 

Maybe if it is hundreds of km wide, well then we still probably have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth a few times over, so that would fragment it, but there would need to be some kind of explosion to actually push the fragments away out of the path of earth since anything over 30km might heat the atmosphere up too much if it were broken into pieces, and all the radiation may damage the atmosphere. But less that, small enough pieces will simply vaporize and heat up the atmosphere.

 

Although, according to that website, the lighter pieces that don't completely vaporize travel slower, so perhaps we can still have many many Newtons of energy hit the earth, but the impact won't be as devastating... if the pieces are the right size. It's just likely that many many people's homes would be destroyed.

 

I guess blowing it up into pieces that aren't small enough to completely vaporize and heat up the atmosphere but not big enough to actually cause large impacts might be the solution for even a 100km meteor, but how would you control it that much?

Edited March 31, 2012 by questionposter

[Spyman]

Look questionposter this is getting tiresome, I never said that small pieces would not vaporize in the atmosphere. You are either completely missing the point or deliberately avoiding to address it. If you don't want to learn then I am not going to force feed you, this is my last try.

 

 

The difference is still how the energy is transferred. Instead of the crust of the Earth being completely shattered, you have the atmosphere warming up as well as probably a few deep impacts, but nothing that would cause mass extinction if it weren't many many km large.

Yes, the energy will get transferred to Earth differently. Yes, the crust of the Earth will remain fully intact.

 

But the atmosphere will be warming up as HELL due to the following two facts I have tried to get you to understand:

 

FACT: The amount of energy released by a single large collision or many small collisions is essentially the same, given the physics of kinetic and potential energy.

Do you really not understand that all the smaller pieces will release the same amount of kinetic energy into the atmosphere of Earth?

It doesn't matter what size the pieces have, they could be tiny, medium or large chunks but still deliver the same total energy.

 

FACT: The total kinetic energy delivered on impact or from vaporising by a 10 km diameter rock coming at us with 60 km/s is ENORMOUS!

Do you really not understand that this is much much more than the energy the Earth gets from a few seconds of sunlight?

The fragments could together cause an tremendous explosion in the atmosphere that in total equals to 610 000 000 000 000 tons of TNT.

(That is like 500 miljoooooon nuclear bombs or almost 25 000 times greater than all nuclear warheads in the world together.)

 

 

I don't see what your asking evidence for exactly...Your asking for evidence that if a piece of iron is small enough that it will vaporize? Because that's my..."claim", even though I thought it was just a fact.

Lets look at what you have claimed since you don't even seem to understand what you have said and I want evidence for:

 

FACT: I said that breaking a rock large enough to cause mass extinction up into smaller pieces would not help.

FACT: I gave an example of an rock with 10 km diameter and impact velocity of 60 km/s like Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9.

FACT: You oppose that and claimed that fragmenting this rock would help and stop an mass extinction from occurring.

 

Now can you provide provide evidence that a mass extinction can be prevented if the mentioned rock will get fragmented?

 

I don't want to hear that you don't know or can't do and neither what you think, guess or suppose, PROVE IT!

 

You can of course also admit that you were wrong and retract your claim, instead to be too stubborn to learn.

Edited April 1, 2012 by Spyman

[questionposter]

Look questionposter this is getting tiresome, I never said that small pieces would not vaporize in the atmosphere. You are either completely missing the point or deliberately avoiding to address it. If you don't want to learn then I am not going to force feed you, this is my last try.

 

 

 

Yes, the energy will get transferred to Earth differently. Yes, the crust of the Earth will remain fully intact.

 

But the atmosphere will be warming up as HELL due to the following two facts I have tried to get you to understand:

 

FACT: The amount of energy released by a single large collision or many small collisions is essentially the same, given the physics of kinetic and potential energy.

Do you really not understand that all the smaller pieces will release the same amount of kinetic energy into the atmosphere of Earth?

It doesn't matter what size the pieces have, they could be tiny, medium or large chunks but still deliver the same total energy.

 

FACT: The total kinetic energy delivered on impact or from vaporising by a 10 km diameter rock coming at us with 60 km/s is ENORMOUS!

Do you really not understand that this is much much more than the energy the Earth gets from a few seconds of sunlight?

The fragments could together cause an tremendous explosion in the atmosphere that in total equals to 610 000 000 000 000 tons of TNT.

(That is like 500 miljoooooon nuclear bombs or almost 25 000 times greater than all nuclear warheads in the world together.)

 

 

 

Lets look at what you have claimed since you don't even seem to understand what you have said and I want evidence for:

 

FACT: I said that breaking a rock large enough to cause mass extinction up into smaller pieces would not help.

FACT: I gave an example of an rock with 10 km diameter and impact velocity of 60 km/s like Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9.

FACT: You oppose that and claimed that fragmenting this rock would help and stop an mass extinction from occurring.

 

Now can you provide provide evidence that a mass extinction can be prevented if the mentioned rock will get fragmented?

 

I don't want to hear that you don't know or can't do and neither what you think, guess or suppose, PROVE IT!

 

You can of course also admit that you were wrong and retract your claim, instead to be too stubborn to learn.

 

Your not even reading my posts, are you? Although I guess it's pointless to ask that.

 

I already stated it is very likely too many fragments could heat up the atmosphere too much. This is my acknowledgement of the law of conservation of energy!

I suppose if it is big enough and all the pieces were that small, then it might heat the atmosphere up to the point where the oceans boil away, which is what was happening when Earth was in its very early stages

 

However, it doesn't stop here. All the shrapnel from the bombs and more of the many meteor pieces will cause friction upon entering the atmosphere. Statistics going back to the early stages of Earth show that when the Earth was being constantly bombarded by hundreds of meteors, it's temperature rose a fair amount due to those meteors.

 

 

 

 

 

However, the article I posted said pieces that didn't vaporized would be small, and they wouldn't shatter Earth's crust, so the extra energy could simply be many many small impacts in the form of Newtons, which also follows the law of the conservation of energy. So if the pieces also travel slow enough not all of the energy get's released via friction, but also many small newtons of force which not only wouldn't shatter the crust, but would likely not have much of an effect at all, except perhaps possibly altering Earth's orbit or rotation by an almost immeasurably small amount.

The rest of the energy would be in the form of potential energy in the rocks at rest on Earth's surface which did not completely vaporize nor were they big enough to shatter any part of the crust.

 

Obviously I can't prove this works because there isn't a giant meteor heading for us to test it on, all I can do is look at smaller scale models and similar things, like sunlight versus a laser beam.

 

If the pieces aren't too small or too big, then it's like sunlight. It heats up the atmosphere some and the surface, but not either one to the point where life is extinct.

 

So an additional thing I figured should happen now according to what I had just said, is that the speed of the meteor should try to be reduced, which reduces the amount of energy it transfers. This can be done with explosives probably, because we can put energy into the opposite direction of the meteor and thus make the net energy carrying the meteor towards us lesser amount thus reducing the force it hits Earth with.

Is that "conservative" enough for you?

 

But, if there's something hundreds of km of rock heading at us, we would likely see it many many millions of miles before it got to Earth, and that would probably be far away enough to use up every nuke we have on it and try and spread it out as much as possible after trying to direction-ally reduce its speed.

 

 

This logically leads me to the modified conclusion that if there is a meteor that isn't big enough to use every nuke on due to the costs outweighing the benefits but would still cause mass extinctions, the best thing to do is to try and reduce it's speed with a lot of energy as well as fragment it into pieces that aren't "too" small but not too big so that they can evenly distribute energy to both the atmosphere and the ground so that no particular part of the biosphere is damaged too much.

 

The temperature increase in the atmosphere could send us back to the dinosaur era or possibly an ice age if there is too much dust in the atmosphere from pieces that happened to not get fragmented to a small enough size, but it's better than Earth's crust being completely shattered.

 

There is probably easily a size limit where no matter what, the energy that will would be transferred would still be too much, although I kind of wonder even if there is another planet that would collide with us if we could first nuke as much of it as we can, and then have it transfer its remaining energy gradually in the form of Newtons only so that it would simply push Earth into a different orbit rather than shattering its crust, and the added rock would probably add to the gravity, kind of like pushing rather than punching.

Edited April 1, 2012 by questionposter

[Spyman]

Your not even reading my posts, are you? Although I guess it's pointless to ask that.

I am reading your posts thoroughly but the problem is that you keep changing your mind, wriggling around and avoiding to express yourself clearly.

 

 

I already stated it is very likely too many fragments could heat up the atmosphere too much. This is my acknowledgement of the law of conservation of energy!

If you truly acknowledge conservation of energy and thinks that the fragments would heat the atmosphere to much then you must also agree with:

 

"However bombing it with the sole purpose to break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event, an Earth killer will release enough energy into the atmosphere to wipe us out even if all pieces are small enough to burn up before they reach the ground."

 

I asked you if you had changed your mind to agree with what I said in post #16 and you answered "No" in post #17.

 

You need to make your mind up. Will the rock with 10 km diameter and impact velocity of 60 km/s cause a mass extincion even if fragmented or not?

 

 

Obviously I can't prove this works ...

Yeah sure - Why am I not surprised?

[questionposter]

I am reading your posts thoroughly but the problem is that you keep changing your mind, wriggling around and avoiding to express yourself clearly.

 

 

 

If you truly acknowledge conservation of energy and thinks that the fragments would heat the atmosphere to much then you must also agree with:

 

"However bombing it with the sole purpose to break it up into smaller pieces will only help if it is to small to cause an catastrophic extinction level event, an Earth killer will release enough energy into the atmosphere to wipe us out even if all pieces are small enough to burn up before they reach the ground."

 

I asked you if you had changed your mind to agree with what I said in post #16 and you answered "No" in post #17.

 

You need to make your mind up. Will the rock with 10 km diameter and impact velocity of 60 km/s cause a mass extincion even if fragmented or not?

 

 

 

Yeah sure - Why am I not surprised?

 

It seems like your always one or two posts behind in your thinking. In my last post I stated if they were broken up into pieces that also weren't too small, then they wouldn't release "all" their energy into the atmosphere via friction, but also to the ground in the form of Newtons as well, but not enough of a concentration of Newtons in any particular spot to actually shatter the crust, but the energy added still might change the rotation or orbit a little bit as well as destroy many homes.

Also, an Earth "killer" or a "severe biosphere damager"? Because obviously something that would be an "Earth killer" would just destroy the Earth in which case it would probably be the size of mercury or larger. Now that I think about it though, even when that happened before, the Earth still survived and gained a moon. And then, even when there was a meteor that severely damaged the biosphere, life still survived, twice.

In short, if there is a killer meteor but not one that would actually just destroy the entire Earth but rather just severely damage the biosphere, break it up into pieces that aren't too small nor too big. The atmosphere will heat up probably a good amount and the force might push Earth in a slightly different direction, but the Earth's crusts won't be shattered and the oceans won't boil away.

 

Siddhartha was right all along, there is in fact a middle path.

 

Also, you can't really prove we would necessarily go extinct either, because obviously other animals survived the last huge meteor.

Edited April 1, 2012 by questionposter

[Spyman]

It seems like your always one or two posts behind in your thinking.

LOL

 

 

In my last post I stated if they were broken up into pieces that also weren't too small, then they wouldn't release "all" their energy into the atmosphere via friction, but also to the ground in the form of Newtons as well, but not enough of a concentration of Newtons in any particular spot to actually shatter the crust, but the energy added still might change the rotation or orbit a little bit as well as destroy many homes.

You are wrong.

 

 

Also, an Earth "killer" or a "severe biosphere damager"? Because obviously something that would be an "Earth killer" would just destroy the Earth in which case it would probably be the size of mercury or larger. Now that I think about it though, even when that happened before, the Earth still survived and gained a moon. And then, even when there was a meteor that severely damaged the biosphere, life still survived, twice.

Obviously we are talking about something able to cause a mass extincion in this context and not something actually able to destroy the planet.

 

 

In short, if there is a killer meteor but not one that would actually just destroy the entire Earth but rather just severely damage the biosphere, break it up into pieces that aren't too small nor too big. The atmosphere will heat up probably a good amount and the force might push Earth in a slightly different direction, but the Earth's crusts won't be shattered and the oceans won't boil away.

In other words you still believe that fragmenting the rock will help. You are of course free to keep your belief and put faith in your speculations.

 

However facts and experts does not agree with you and since your evidence is lacking, I strongly suggest others to not trust you on this.

 

 

Siddhartha was right all along, there is in fact a middle path.

Siddhartha's opinion doesn't have any weight here...

 

 

Also, you can't really prove we would necessarily go extinct either, because obviously other animals survived the last huge meteor.

So have you seen any dinosaurs lately?

 

Experts seems to agree with me that large asteroids are a seriously threat.

 

Meteorite impact

 

Earth has collided with several asteroids in recent geological history. The Cretaceous-Tertiary asteroid, for example, is theorized to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If such an object struck Earth it could have a serious impact on civilization. It is even possible that humanity would be completely destroyed; for this to occur the asteroid would need to be at least 1 km (0.62 mi) in diameter, but probably between 3 and 10 km (2–6 miles).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_and_planet_Earth#Meteorite_impact

Edited April 1, 2012 by Spyman

[Moontanman]

What if the asteroid is a rubble pile? Aren't many asteroids now thought to be rubble piles instead of large solid bodies?

 

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~bottke/rubble/rub.html

 

 

I've got a special early warning hat, that is guaranteed to warn you if a meteor is going to hit you, it costs only $1000 and comes with a 1 billion dollar life insurance policy that automatically pays if the meteor hits you and doesn't warn you of the impact.... The policy is null and void if you don't wear the hat 24/7

 

So have you seen any dinosaurs lately?

 

Yes, a murder of crows visits the field next to my house every morning....