Meteor the size of Texas

[Dashield28]

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.

[Shamslam]

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.

[MagusUnion]

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

.... Yeah, they do... You assume that

A. Planets are held in their orbits with no way to move out of them, like a track line... and
B. There are outside forces to absorb the energy of the collision, causing the force of the impact to diffuse elsewhere...

I can easily say that neither of these exist on the scale that we are referring to... so QFT if you haven't had an actual astronomy class (college level or higher) in the last decade...

[AshestoAsh]

Most of you are linking blogs written by complete idiots...anyone can write a blog post and say so and so will happen if this happens. Dont get pulled into a random link if its not from a credited source.

[xylophone]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120591/

"He has space dementia!" lol

[Fraza]

The asteroid that took out dinosaurs was 10km across. State of texas is 1200km across. The amount of rock coming at us would be hell of a lot more than 120 times of the 10km one though. Assuming spherical shape for both:

The formula for volume of the sphere is V = (4/3)πr^3 where r is radius.

10km across = 5km radius = 523.3km^3
1200km across = 600km radius = 90 432 000km^3

That's 1.7 million times more rock than the asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs. Of course the power of the impact also depends on the angle and speed and density but still.. No human will survive this.

[Dashield28]

.... Yeah, they do... You assume that

A. Planets are held in their orbits with no way to move out of them, like a track line... and
B. There are outside forces to absorb the energy of the collision, causing the force of the impact to diffuse elsewhere...

I can easily say that neither of these exist on the scale that we are referring to... so QFT if you haven't had an actual astronomy class (college level or higher) in the last decade...

How do you account for Theia? It didnt bounce.. Earth's orbit dindt change. It's rotation did.

[gherkin]

Why do americans insist on using States as a unit of measurement? It's not like 80% have any grasp of the scope in the first place.

[Narsaruzz]

i dont if it have been said before but a meteor the size of texas would proberly hit the earth out of its orbit and thefore make it either crash into the sun of go so close that it would turn to charcoal(spelling?)

[MagusUnion]

How do you account for Theia? It didnt bounce.. Earth's orbit dindt change. It's rotation did.

Because the Earth was still mostly molten at the time... that was 4.5 Billion years ago, when the planet was still hot (and by hot, I mean FUCKING hot), so the impact was mostly absorbed by the less dense molten rock on collision. The resulting material that was thrown OUT of the Earth BECAME the Moon because of it...

You done trolling yet?

[ThePotato]

hmm, i suppose we could just put a giant trampoline right under the meteor impact point, would bounce that bad boy right back into space

[wicker]

I'm sure humanity will wipe itself first

yup i agree

[Fraza]

hmm, i suppose we could just put a giant trampoline right under the meteor impact point, would bounce that bad boy right back into space

Better yet, let's dig a giant hole through the earth so the asteroid will just pass through.

[Lucifersam]

Better yet, let's dig a giant hole through the earth so the asteroid will just pass through.

Or we could dig out Texas, launch it into space, and replace it with the asteroid.

[Dashield28]

I'm not trolling, I'm providing arguments. Earth's crust is only 6 miles (under oceans) up to 50 miles thick. That is the only solid part of earth. You are telling me that this thin solid surface would be enough to "bounce" an object away? How do you account for the atmospheric shockwave. It has to strike earth.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense.

BTW I am not talking about asteroid to asteroid collisions or meteor to meteor collisions, I am talking about texas sized object coming through the atmosphere and crashing into earth.

[Lagwin]

Will it destroy the planet? no the planet will still be here but you wouldnt be living to see it, there are alot of things that will happen... the initial impact and resulting shockwave, the boiling of the sea, something that big will more than likley cause all the volcanoes to erupt at the same time,the likes of yellowstone sinking into a sea of magma and the amount of dust that will be in the atmosphere assuming we actualy have one left after the impact would prety much kill everything on the plus side depending on how it hit the planet we might end up with another moon

And is it just me that keeps being disapointed every time the suposed end of the world dosnt happen?

[saberon]

Assuming the Asteroid is made of pure iron...

The density of pure iron is 7.87 g/cm3

Texas is ~690,000 sq KM.


Assuming 1cm thick so I can operate on square's...

690,000 sq KM

1 square meter = 10,000 sq cm.

1 square KM = 1,000,000 square meters.

1 square KM = 10,000,000,000.

10 billion square CM by 690,000 is

6,900,000,000,000,000.

6.9 million billion square CM.

6.9million billion * 7.8 grams is...

53,820,000,000,000 KG.

Since KE = 1/2 mv2

26,900,000,000,000.


So, assuming an asteroid is moving at a whopping 1 m/s, it would impact for approximately 26.9 TRILLION Joules.

Which is approximately the equivalent of 4483.33 Hiroshima bombs.

Now, according to google, the average speed of an asteroid is 25km per second.

Which means it would hit the Earth with the equivalent of 112,873,250 Hiroshima bombs.
112 million.

And that is an asteroid the size of Texas' surface area (1cm thick).

So Imagine 112 million Hiroshima bombs hitting the Earth. Think we could really survive that?
And that is assuming the best case scenario, which is that this asteroid the size of texas is a freakin pancake.

[Collegeguy]

without any doubt it would, but you could see it coming long before it ever hit.

[14fighter]

All human life would die the Earth would have a pretty bigass dent/hole. The theory about the moon is that earth collided with a mars sized object and eventually the debris clumped together to form the moon and we "absorbed" the rest of it. The initial impact would immediately probably wipe out life on USA then the natural events that would occur would finish the rest. The only safe people would be the ones in space.

[Cosmetica]

If that actually happened, how early can we see it coming with our own eyes and what would most people be doing in that situation. I wonder if by the time that we start seeing it how much time we have before gg.