View Poll Results: Would a meteor with the size of Texas wipe out earth?

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336. This poll is closed
  • Yes

    273 81.25%
  • No

    63 18.75%
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  1. #121
    Bloodsail Admiral Dashield28's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Darnash View Post
    There are some extremophiles(?) that would survive, but life as we know it would be obliterated. Over a few millennia, life would rebuild, but intelligent life wouldnt be seen again for millions and millions of years.
    Seen again? I've yet to see it.

    ---------- Post added 2011-02-02 at 02:44 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Modibybob View Post
    I bet most of the people here have absolutely no idea how incredibly large the state of Texas is.
    Is it the size of Mars? I doubt it. It would not shatter the Earth. Total earth devastation, yes. Eliminating ALL life, possibly. Eliminating 95% of life, most definitely.

  2. #122
    The Lightbringer Kouki's Avatar
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    I am an astronomer Working for the university of Alberta Astronomy class.

    It all depends on the mass and type of material the meteor is made of and its speed.
    You could all be wiped out by a marble sized meteor if it was fast and dense.

    And a large Texas sized meteor could break up if it was made of powder.
    Also its impossible to just fire missiles as some would be so dense it barely breaks it up
    While others are more like rubber and keep their form absorbing the force of the blasts.

  3. #123
    Bloodsail Admiral Dashield28's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kouki View Post
    I am an astronomer Working for the university of Alberta Astronomy class.

    It all depends on the mass and type of material the meteor is made of and its speed.
    You could all be wiped out by a marble sized meteor if it was fast and dense.

    And a large Texas sized meteor could break up if it was made of powder.
    Also its impossible to just fire missiles as some would be so dense it barely breaks it up
    While others are more like rubber and keep their form absorbing the force of the blasts.
    Wouldnt firing missles at it cause to have potentially 30 Rhode Island sized meteors hit all over earth?

  4. #124
    Quote Originally Posted by Badpaladin View Post
    Oh, god. that movie is quite possibly the single most hated thing in all of Hollywood by physicists. I think they even hate it more than 2012.
    And does anyone outside of the geeksquads really care what physicists think about scientific oriented movies being realistic?

  5. #125
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    Humans will survive, in caves. We have lights that recreate the sunlight so we can grow vegitables to eat and feed to animals. It will take a while for us to recover but we won`t be exterminated.

  6. #126
    The Lightbringer Kouki's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dashield28 View Post
    Wouldnt firing missles at it cause to have potentially 30 Rhode Island sized meteors hit all over earth?
    Again it depends on its density and its materials.
    If it was a really dense metal or elastic based material then nothing would change even if you fired a castle bravo nuke.

    If it was a weaker material that crumbles or powders off then your attack was a waste as that kind of thing could burn up in the earths atmosphere.

  7. #127
    I am Murloc! Oneirophobia's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Naidia View Post
    Pretty much,
    -snip-

    /thread.
    This makes me wonder how alligators survived the first one.

    Also, I guess it comes down to how slow its moving and if the moon gets in the way. Would be pretty interesting if it was going REALLY slow and it just... started to orbit us instead. DOUBLE MOON. ITS SO BEAUTIFUL. WHATDOESITMEAN.

    If it hit the moon that'd be neat to watch. Assuming the effects on Earth are survivable.
    Also, if it was going REALLY REALLY REALLY SLOW it might just get stuck to the side of us. Would be interesting to have a planet shaped like those bubbles attached at the center.

    ---------- Post added 2011-02-02 at 07:52 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Basaeth View Post
    Humans will survive, in caves. We have lights that recreate the sunlight so we can grow vegitables to eat and feed to animals. It will take a while for us to recover but we won`t be exterminated.
    If someone somehow survived that, we also can grow meat now. So basically only humans need to survive.

  8. #128
    The Lightbringer Kouki's Avatar
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    You also should consider direction.
    If it was from our own asteroid belt, then jupiter saturn and neptune would pull the meteor to them.
    If it came from any other direction its chance to come anywhere dangerously close to earth is very very minimal.

    We live on the best spot in the galaxy to avoid hits like this.

  9. #129
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    Also, if we knew there would be a meteor hitting earth, we will just fire some humans into space and make them settle there, still orbiting earth but still alive.

  10. #130
    Quote Originally Posted by Dashield28 View Post
    Wouldnt firing missles at it cause to have potentially 30 Rhode Island sized meteors hit all over earth?
    Everyone always says this, and I still fail to see how this would be a bad thing. Now, 30 RHODE ISLAND sized ones, we would still be screwed... But for, say, a 30mi asteroid or such, why would blowing it into smaller parts be such a bad thing?

    First of all, that would mean less mass overall hits the earth. An explosion far enough from earth (yes, we have the guidance systems to do this, its a matter of seeing it a few weeks out) would cause a lot of the "shrapnel" to fly off course.

    Secondly, more parts means more surface area exposed means more material burned up in the atmosphere. Less overall damage.

    Yes, there may be more "ground zeros", but the overall damage should still be less....

  11. #131
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    Quote Originally Posted by Basaeth View Post
    Humans will survive, in caves. We have lights that recreate the sunlight so we can grow vegitables to eat and feed to animals. It will take a while for us to recover but we won`t be exterminated.
    LOL. Do you realize that the Meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs and 70% of life on Earth was 6 miles in diameter? SIX MILES. Something the size of Texas (773 miles x 790 miles) Would OBLITERATE all life. Bacteria might survive. MIGHT survive. What cave will you hide in when tidal waves 100s of miles high sweep across the continents, ash, dust, molten rock rain down for days, an ice age moves in. No food, most water contaminated, NO SUNLIGHT.

  12. #132
    Titan Frozenbeef's Avatar
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    Doesn't jupiter shield us ? 0o or is that only asteroids from our solar system thingy?
    Last edited by Frozenbeef; 2011-02-02 at 07:59 PM.

  13. #133
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    If WoW were to end... then all life on earth would end.
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  14. #134
    Short Answer: No

    Long Answer: No, because there is no asteroid of this size flying around in the solar system, and even if one like it did hit the Earth, it would only bump it out of it's current orbit...

    Smh for this, and that ghost crap that people are trolling today...

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozenbeef View Post
    Doesn't jupiter shield us ? 0o or is that only asteroids from our solar system?

    Fixed, and yes it does....

  15. #135
    Pandaren Monk
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    Quote Originally Posted by Badpaladin View Post
    Oh, god. that movie is quite possibly the single most hated thing in all of Hollywood by physicists. I think they even hate it more than 2012.
    3rd most hated. Speaking as a scientist: "The Core" and "2012" are much worse.

    Armageddon's science is laughably bad (particularly how they deal with the meteorite, and the complete ignorance of gravitational capture), but there are only three real fundamental mistakes: First, we'd see it coming, we can detect something the size of Texas at least as far out as, say, Saturn's orbit; second, drilling 500m and then setting off a nuke would make a small crater in an asteroid that size, not split it in half; and third, blowing something up that close to Earth wouldn't save us, Earth's gravity would capture it and gg.

    The Core and 2012 (and Day After Tomorrow, isn't all this dreck written by the same idiot?) are, on the other hand, continuous and endless examples of a writer who failed middle school science classes.
    The plural of anecdote is not "data". It's "Bayesian inference".

  16. #136

  17. #137
    Bloodsail Admiral Dashield28's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MagusUnion View Post
    Short Answer: No

    Long Answer: No, because there is no asteroid of this size flying around in the solar system, and even if one like it did hit the Earth, it would only bump it out of it's current orbit...

    Smh for this, and that ghost crap that people are trolling today...




    Fixed, and yes it does....
    Bump it out of the orbit?? LOL this isnt snooker man. Planets and asteroids dont bounce off one another.

  18. #138
    ONLY if bruce willis and ben afleck are dead could this happen, so at the current moment no we would drill it to death

  19. #139
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vulcanasm View Post
    3rd most hated. Speaking as a scientist: "The Core" and "2012" are much worse.

    Armageddon's science is laughably bad (particularly how they deal with the meteorite, and the complete ignorance of gravitational capture), but there are only three real fundamental mistakes: First, we'd see it coming, we can detect something the size of Texas at least as far out as, say, Saturn's orbit; second, drilling 500m and then setting off a nuke would make a small crater in an asteroid that size, not split it in half; and third, blowing something up that close to Earth wouldn't save us, Earth's gravity would capture it and gg.

    The Core and 2012 (and Day After Tomorrow, isn't all this dreck written by the same idiot?) are, on the other hand, continuous and endless examples of a writer who failed middle school science classes.
    Asteroid - planetoid or large object orbiting the sun
    Meteor/meteroid - Smaller than an asteroid but larger than an atom object orbiting the sun
    Meteorite - remains of a meteor that crashed into Earth.

    Just saying.

  20. #140
    Pit Lord Shamslam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dryade View Post
    A meteor 6 miles wide wiped out the dinosaurs... Texas is 12x the size of that, so what was the point of this thread?
    Texas is a little bigger than 72 miles...

    A Texas sized meteor would wipe out all but maybe the single celled organisms. In the 00.01% chance anything did survive the initial impact, the earthquake, airblast, potential axis shift (change in pretty much everything) would take care of it. It wouldn't destroy (explode?) the planet, the planets are pretty tough. It would be forever scarred with a massive crater, but it would remain intact.

    In reality though, something that large would never get close enough. It'd get pulled towards Jupiter or Saturn most likely.
    Last edited by Shamslam; 2011-02-02 at 08:16 PM.
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