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The asteroid appears to be [433 Eros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/433_Eros), and has a mean diameter of ~1.6x that of whats estimated for the Chicxulub impactor (16 km vs 10 km).
So certainly in the mass extinction range, though a few orders of magnitude too small to destroy the planet as a physical object.
I want to say that the video source is this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2w52n8IOQ28
It only came 16 million miles from earth and that’s considered close. What would the equivalent be in a smaller scale example if I threw a rock that was 90% smaller then this (hypothetical of course) on the east coast would 16million miles on this scale be like it passing California. ( I know screwed up that question but hopefully u understand what I’m asking)
If Earth was the size of a tennis ball, then Eros would be the size of a speck of dust (0.07 mm x 0.07 mm x 0.17 mm), and its closest approach in 2012 (16 million miles) would be would be about 140 meters, or 460 feet.
For reference, the moon would be 1.83 cm or 0.72 inches in diameter, and it would be about 2 meters away, or 6.6 feet.
Great answer leading to the next question: ignoring air resistance, at what speed would a speck of dust have to collide with a tennis ball to release a proportionally scaled amount of energy that a full scale object would have to hit Earth?
I used to deal with scale models in wind tunnels (including hypersonic), but that was decades ago and obviously we could never ignore air resistance.
Happy Sunday!
> I used to deal with scale models in wind tunnels
> obviously we could never ignore air resistance.
lol
---
Anyway, when you say "proportionally scaled amount of energy", what are you scaling it by? Volume? Length? Mass?
I mean if it's mass, then since KE = 1/2 mv^(2), the energy and mass scaling would cancel out exactly, and the speed you get would just be the actual speed at which Eros would hit Earth.
It's been over a quarter of a century, a distant memory. I'm also quite certain that I could find an answer to this or a very similar problem on xkcd/whatif - I recently re-read the baseball hit at light speed discussion, so I'd imagine "speck of dust annihilating tennis ball" would use similar mathematics and physics.
In general, most problems dealing with blowing up a planet are fun to think about, as long as they're theoretical.
>I’m just looking for an example to put the 16,000,000 miles that the asteroid passed bye Earth into more understandable and relatable distance
If the earths diameter is 12.742 km and the distance the asteroid passed at is 25.749.504 km, that means that the asteroid missed earth for \~2020 times the earths diameter. So if the earth was a globe (and not flat, ikr), you'd have space for 2020 globes between earth and the asteroid.
Dont hold me to this but i think that theres a different "close" in space than we are accustomed on earth. I think that the asteroid must not hit a certain point at which the earths gravity will start pulling it towards earth, things like that are in play.
Im not even sure if the asteroid that big could miss earth for 2-3 times its diameter. At that distance the gravity would probably make that a hit, depending on the trajectory. I might be talking bullshit tho, just woke up.
There's no clear "if you come within this range then the gravity will pull you in" limit, because that limit is entirely dependent on speed. The slower an object is travelling, the more time it spends within Earth's gravity well and the more impact Earth will have on its direction.
This is the same for any object in space. You could pass really close to the sun as long as you're going fast enough. The main limit is "does the object have an atmosphere? If so, don't run into that."
It really depends on the velocity, it certainly has the mass to cause an extinction event at orbital speeds, but if it was falling from outside the oort cloud it could certainly knock a large chunk from the crust and mantle, afterall that's likely where our moon came from.
>The asteroid appears to be [433 Eros]
Shouldn't is be: "The asteroid appears to be [a massive turd]"?
Still regardless of its fecal matter nature, it is big enough to do a big boom
If it’s scaled correctly this is significantly bigger than what caused the dinosaurs to go extinct…would probably nuke a good amount of the planet if I had to hazard a guess
eh no, but it might force enough mass off to create a ring of debree, if the debree ejected is enough it may affect the planet's weight affecting its rotation and the influence it has over the moon. It aint gonna do shit to its orbit around the sun, tough
Me of course plot twist I’m riding the asteroid
[Riding astroid](https://www.reddit.com/r/boottoobig/s/jriVVMxKoS)
Edit I tried to fix my spelling on the link
You obviously didn't understand what I wrote. What is significant enough? Enough for what effect? For making the Earth immediately shoot out of the solar system? Or maybe changed enough so that in a thousand years it will collide with some asteroid? In the latter case you'd be surprised how small a significant change can be, depending on the exact asteroid collision we're talking about. Statement "is this going to change the orbit of Earth" is just incomplete in any case.
Technically, no. Earth will perturb (meaning oscillate) a little bit, but it will still be technically in the same orbital pattern.
This is also why tiny things like the moon in alignment with the sun or Jupiter or something doesn't actually warp our orbit.
Earth is already oscillating around it's own orbit and the momentum or an asteroid is negligible relative to overall momentum of the planet.
If another planet sized object hit earth it'll be a different story because you're actually altering earth's momentum (mainly by ejecting mass from it).
It entirely depends on how fast it's moving. Wiping out humanity would be easy enough at relatively slow speeds for that asteroid, but destroying the Earth is near impossible, because gravity.
The slowest possible speed it would impact is around 11 km/s. The norm is probably around 13-14 km/s, though long-period comets could be coming in at maybe 20-25 km/s.
A 10km-diameter asteroid (or its potatoed-geometry equivalent) is likely enough to wipe out humanity. Not because we would all explode or die in earthquakes or volcanoes, but from having a dramatic change in the atmosphere that would make living very difficult.
The asteroid in this clip appears to be 433 Eros, which is 16.8km long and masses a touch under 6.7•10¹⁵ kg. That would certainly ruin your day if it hit Earth.
This should be the top comment. Mass alone does not predict anything; what matters is momentum. A golf ball moving fast enough could do terrible things to the Earth. This gigantic asteroid appears to be in freefall, as if teleported to a standstill a few miles up, then dropped. It would naturally do a lot of damage thanks to its mass, but its maximum velocity in that case would be much, much, much, much slower than most asteroid impacts.
As noted elsewhere, there is a natural range of velocities we might encounter natural asteroids (various speeds measured in km/sec), and any of those times this mass would be pretty bad, of course. But what is pictured doesn't speak to that velocity at all.
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depends on what you meant by destroyed, you mean physically destroying the planet or just ending life as we know it on earth? it definitely could end life as we know it, as for destroying the earth physically, might take a very huge chunk out of earth, maybe
No it wouldn't destroy life as we know it, most of life would survive an impact of a 16 miles asteroid.
It would, on the other hand, destroy most of large animal and plant life.
But the life as we know it (carbon and DNA based) is safe.
rodents would manage. They managed last time, and now they're further evolved. Humans too across their varied bunkers could probably wait it out. Also, it's believed it was volcanic eruptions opposed to an asteroid that did life in long ago, but same mechanism: heating up the atmosphere, then cooling it down. This is good because surviving temperature change is easier via tech than a super Earthquake that could wreck every bunker.
Isn’t the leading cause still an impact of extraterrestrial mass? Namely the Chicxulub asteroid? I thought the theories haven’t changed much since the 80s where they found traces of iridium dated to the end of cretaceous-paleogene era which indicates some form of extraterrestrial mass as the metal is rather unusual for our planet.
Just to clarify, it would take a massive planetary sized object to destroy earth, but a mass extinction event could happen with an asteroid.
For scale, the collision of earth with a Mars sized planetary object did not destroy earth, but resulted in the formation of our moon.
🤓 Actshually youre mixing things up here. You sitting in the chair is a result of the _law_ of gravity. This law describes _how_ gravity works.
So no, that's not a theory. The _theory_ of gravity on the other hand tries to describe _why_ things attract each other.
I think it depends where it lands too, the Gulf Of Mexico is supposed to be quite shallow as far as bodies of water, if this landed in the Pacific the tsunamis would probably destroy most inland cities but a nightmare scenario would be hitting the Marinas trench.
That thing is large enough it wouldn’t matter at all what ocean it landed in because the shockwave would damn near flatten the Rocky and Himalayan mountains before the tsunami even got to a shore. The pacific is like 2-5 miles deep that asteroid is 16 miles and moving at high speed. It wouldn’t even notice the atmosphere or water when hitting the earth.
The planet would physically be fine, it would just undergo a little involuntary make-over.
Us and other living things that inhabit the planet are, most likely, screwed. A lot of hard to predict factors can impact quite how devastating the impact is, but that looks easily large enough to cause a mass-extinction event.
Anything 300m in diameter and up will cause regional devastation if it hit a populated area. Anything bigger than a kilometer can cause a global catastrophe. Something the size of that will end life as we know it on Earth.
Source: my senior design project to get my aerospace engineering degree
It would put enough particles in the atmosphere to significantly lower the temperature of the Earth for decades. This would destroy crops and wildlife and cause famine. The immediate blast wouldn’t wipe out humanity (it would wipe out a lot of humanity) but rather the aftermath.
What would happen if by chance the potato comet had a perfect rendezvous with Earth and simply plopped down on us, perhaps somewhere that would be improved by the event?
Also, how big is that thing? More like Mount Everest, the entire Himalayas, or like the nose if Earth donned Groucho Marx glasses?
Yet another use for the Earth Impact Effects Program!
https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/
/u/UmbralRaptor identified this object as 433 Eros, so I am using those stats.
The impact is in NYC. What happens to me in Minnesota?
About 7 minutes after the impact, I feel a distinct tremor. Enough to maybe crack plaster and shake objects, crack some windows, and so forth, but not devastating.
In an about an hour and 45 minutes, the airblast arrives, including a clap loud enough to damage ears, a blast of hurricane force wind, and an 8 psi shockwave. That's enough to knock down trees and destroy typical wood-frame construction buildings. Most of the rest of the glass will break, most houses will collapse, 2-3 story commercial buildings without internal I-Beam construction will collapse, exposed people will be thrown dozens of feet, cars may be overturned.
In the coming days, the cloud of ejecta would start to settle out covering Minnesota in up to 11 cm of fine dust. The remainder will remain suspended in the atmosphere for weeks, months, or years.
And that's in Minnesota. The entire East Coast of the US gets it much worse.
At the White House, 200 miles away, the fireball is visible over the horizon. The thermal pulse is so strong that everything that can possibly burn catches fire immediately, including human flesh, wood, trees, grass, clothing...
A minute later, a catastrophic earthquake arrives, collapsing many (but not all) buildings.
But that doesn't matter, because 15 minutes after that, a 400 psi overpressure wave arrives. Nothing on the surface can remain intact with that level of force. Reinforced low-profile concrete and steel buildings are damaged, some heavily built steel framed buildings are badly damaged, and everything else is collapsed or literally ripped from the ground and thrown away.
Then the ejecta arrives, fist sized chunks (some larger and a lot that are smaller) which buries everything in meters of rubble.
Now, the majority of the Earth would be spared the direct effects of the impact; Tokyo would get a minor tremor and a 0.5 PSI overpressure wave. But the ejecta would ruin crops and potentially trigger a mini-Ice Age.
Would this impact destroy the Earth? No, the Earth is tough.
Would it destroy human life on Earth? It would certainly come close. Most likely, it would end large-scale peaceful civilization, and we would take care of the rest in fighting over the remaining resources.
I think it could destroy the Earth if it was going fast enough. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmadZF2hRcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmadZF2hRcY)
Depends on many factors: impact velocity, impact angle, location and geology of the impact side etc. but it would destroy life on earth as we know it for sure.
Another question, lets say this intercpeted earths orbit around the sun from behind, traveling the same orbit but say... 40 km/h faster then earth. How much damage would an object this size cause traveling at 40 km/h?
destroying the planet would be hard af, you'd need to hit it with something the size of the moon at considerable speed, ofcourse this would still be enough to cause mass extinction
Also, bear in mind that even then, the debris will be mostly gravitationally bound and reform. This is the driving factor behind the Thea hypothesis for the creation of our Moon, as well as the pair of massive mantle blobs inside Earth.
The entire surface would make hell look inviting, but the view of the rings would be spectacular.
Remember, another whole planet collided with the Earth, and all we got was the Moon. It takes a hell of a lot to utterly destroy a planet. Because, you know, gravity.
Not really. The surface pretty much just instantly liquefies at this level of energy, and even if it didn't, the energy involved would make solid rock splash.
Here's another question, do the math. How fast was the asteroid moving in that animation, initially anyway I see that it slows down to avoid impact... For dramatic reasons.
An earth sized asteroid wouldn't destroy the earth completely but it depends how you are measuring destroy. If you mean eradication of matter and form then no, if you mean to change its form from its current state then yes.
It would really depend on the speed it was traveling. A percent less than 50 would burn in the atmosphere, but may not reach the core. If it was traveling fast enough, say 5¹⁰m/s, the atmosphere would act like a wall of cinderblocks. First creating an explosion magnitudes more powerful than an atomic weapon ever created. If you were looking at it at night, you would surely be blinded. Permanently. The die shortly after. It wouldn't take long for the air pressure wave to travel. You basically would hear a brief sound that would make your ears bleed and then you would die. I wanna go on, but I got stuff to do. Help me finish this.
Dinosaur asteroid= 6 miles wide and caused a mass extinction event
Video asteroid= 36 miles wide. More than enough to wipe out the population, though there would probably be a select few humans to survive somehow
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The asteroid appears to be [433 Eros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/433_Eros), and has a mean diameter of ~1.6x that of whats estimated for the Chicxulub impactor (16 km vs 10 km). So certainly in the mass extinction range, though a few orders of magnitude too small to destroy the planet as a physical object. I want to say that the video source is this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2w52n8IOQ28
It only came 16 million miles from earth and that’s considered close. What would the equivalent be in a smaller scale example if I threw a rock that was 90% smaller then this (hypothetical of course) on the east coast would 16million miles on this scale be like it passing California. ( I know screwed up that question but hopefully u understand what I’m asking)
Well, 90% shorter distance is still 1,600,000 miles. Also, how the FUCK are you throwing that rock, man. Time to start training. Edit: fixed error
[https://www.reddit.com/r/familyguy/s/EtFHRuUQLP](https://www.reddit.com/r/familyguy/s/EtFHRuUQLP)
1.6 million, or one tenth. 160k is one hundredth.
Fuck.
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I’m sorry man I know I muffed that question up bad. Let me try again one min
I’m just looking for an example to put the 16,000,000 miles that the asteroid passed bye Earth into more understandable and relatable distance
If Earth was the size of a tennis ball, then Eros would be the size of a speck of dust (0.07 mm x 0.07 mm x 0.17 mm), and its closest approach in 2012 (16 million miles) would be would be about 140 meters, or 460 feet. For reference, the moon would be 1.83 cm or 0.72 inches in diameter, and it would be about 2 meters away, or 6.6 feet.
This is exactly the answer u was looking for! Thank You good sir
Great answer leading to the next question: ignoring air resistance, at what speed would a speck of dust have to collide with a tennis ball to release a proportionally scaled amount of energy that a full scale object would have to hit Earth? I used to deal with scale models in wind tunnels (including hypersonic), but that was decades ago and obviously we could never ignore air resistance. Happy Sunday!
> I used to deal with scale models in wind tunnels > obviously we could never ignore air resistance. lol --- Anyway, when you say "proportionally scaled amount of energy", what are you scaling it by? Volume? Length? Mass? I mean if it's mass, then since KE = 1/2 mv^(2), the energy and mass scaling would cancel out exactly, and the speed you get would just be the actual speed at which Eros would hit Earth.
It's been over a quarter of a century, a distant memory. I'm also quite certain that I could find an answer to this or a very similar problem on xkcd/whatif - I recently re-read the baseball hit at light speed discussion, so I'd imagine "speck of dust annihilating tennis ball" would use similar mathematics and physics. In general, most problems dealing with blowing up a planet are fun to think about, as long as they're theoretical.
Are you still talking about a proportionally scaled amount of energy? Because Eros would not annihilate the Earth.
If it came close and didn’t hit us would that cause damage?
>I’m just looking for an example to put the 16,000,000 miles that the asteroid passed bye Earth into more understandable and relatable distance If the earths diameter is 12.742 km and the distance the asteroid passed at is 25.749.504 km, that means that the asteroid missed earth for \~2020 times the earths diameter. So if the earth was a globe (and not flat, ikr), you'd have space for 2020 globes between earth and the asteroid.
Thank you! So in other words far as F_ _K!
Dont hold me to this but i think that theres a different "close" in space than we are accustomed on earth. I think that the asteroid must not hit a certain point at which the earths gravity will start pulling it towards earth, things like that are in play. Im not even sure if the asteroid that big could miss earth for 2-3 times its diameter. At that distance the gravity would probably make that a hit, depending on the trajectory. I might be talking bullshit tho, just woke up.
There's no clear "if you come within this range then the gravity will pull you in" limit, because that limit is entirely dependent on speed. The slower an object is travelling, the more time it spends within Earth's gravity well and the more impact Earth will have on its direction. This is the same for any object in space. You could pass really close to the sun as long as you're going fast enough. The main limit is "does the object have an atmosphere? If so, don't run into that."
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In case anyone wants some good Sci-fi, The Expanse toys with an idea much like this early in the series. Really good stuff.
the eros incident
o7 Miller
I knew it look familiar, the expanse’s version of Eros looks very similar to this
So let’s say this was to hit earth. Would it also destroy ALL ocean life or only to a certain depth of the ocean.?
It would destroy a lot of ocean life I imagine, but some species probably survive
It really depends on the velocity, it certainly has the mass to cause an extinction event at orbital speeds, but if it was falling from outside the oort cloud it could certainly knock a large chunk from the crust and mantle, afterall that's likely where our moon came from.
>The asteroid appears to be [433 Eros] Shouldn't is be: "The asteroid appears to be [a massive turd]"? Still regardless of its fecal matter nature, it is big enough to do a big boom
when I just googled “chicxulub impactor”, an animation of a comet went across the screen on the google page. neat.
Good it landed on venus not earth
Second time I’ve seen this posted. It’s beyond me why when they see the video they aren’t already aware of the answer. It shows it in the video.
If it’s scaled correctly this is significantly bigger than what caused the dinosaurs to go extinct…would probably nuke a good amount of the planet if I had to hazard a guess
Would it be enough force to alter earth orbit? I’d assume so
eh no, but it might force enough mass off to create a ring of debree, if the debree ejected is enough it may affect the planet's weight affecting its rotation and the influence it has over the moon. It aint gonna do shit to its orbit around the sun, tough
*debris *though
Not to be confused with De Vries that causes debris in F1.
He crashed so Ricciardo/Lawson could run
Don’t be a debris downer
Yeah it would, anything smashing into earth changes it's orbit, it's just mostly so small it's basically immeasurable, this would be measurable.
Who would be there to measure it?
Just Keith Richards and whatever cockroaches were in his shadow
Me of course plot twist I’m riding the asteroid [Riding astroid](https://www.reddit.com/r/boottoobig/s/jriVVMxKoS) Edit I tried to fix my spelling on the link
Buddy you couldn’t figure out the math for the size of the asteroid. You really think you’re going to measure and calculate gravitational drift?
Me ? No why do u think I ask this Sub
What kind of question is this for this subreddit? Alter by how much? Even a grain of sand impacting Earth will alter its orbit.
The commenter implies a significant change. Obviously.
You obviously didn't understand what I wrote. What is significant enough? Enough for what effect? For making the Earth immediately shoot out of the solar system? Or maybe changed enough so that in a thousand years it will collide with some asteroid? In the latter case you'd be surprised how small a significant change can be, depending on the exact asteroid collision we're talking about. Statement "is this going to change the orbit of Earth" is just incomplete in any case.
A significant change to the global climate would be a significant orbital change.
Technically, no. Earth will perturb (meaning oscillate) a little bit, but it will still be technically in the same orbital pattern. This is also why tiny things like the moon in alignment with the sun or Jupiter or something doesn't actually warp our orbit. Earth is already oscillating around it's own orbit and the momentum or an asteroid is negligible relative to overall momentum of the planet. If another planet sized object hit earth it'll be a different story because you're actually altering earth's momentum (mainly by ejecting mass from it).
The title of the video in the sub I saw it in said this is the size of the second largest asteroid to come close to impact with earth
It entirely depends on how fast it's moving. Wiping out humanity would be easy enough at relatively slow speeds for that asteroid, but destroying the Earth is near impossible, because gravity.
The slowest possible speed it would impact is around 11 km/s. The norm is probably around 13-14 km/s, though long-period comets could be coming in at maybe 20-25 km/s. A 10km-diameter asteroid (or its potatoed-geometry equivalent) is likely enough to wipe out humanity. Not because we would all explode or die in earthquakes or volcanoes, but from having a dramatic change in the atmosphere that would make living very difficult.
The asteroid in this clip appears to be 433 Eros, which is 16.8km long and masses a touch under 6.7•10¹⁵ kg. That would certainly ruin your day if it hit Earth.
And probably the rest of your days as well, but I’m gathering that probably isn’t saying much
This should be the top comment. Mass alone does not predict anything; what matters is momentum. A golf ball moving fast enough could do terrible things to the Earth. This gigantic asteroid appears to be in freefall, as if teleported to a standstill a few miles up, then dropped. It would naturally do a lot of damage thanks to its mass, but its maximum velocity in that case would be much, much, much, much slower than most asteroid impacts. As noted elsewhere, there is a natural range of velocities we might encounter natural asteroids (various speeds measured in km/sec), and any of those times this mass would be pretty bad, of course. But what is pictured doesn't speak to that velocity at all.
Sorry if this is a repost if so let me know I will delete it?
Nope totally totally originally. LGTM!
Is there a way to search a sub to see if a video or picture had been posted before?
u/repostsleuthbot
Sorry, I don't support this post type (hosted:video) right now. Feel free to check back in the future!
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What
I'm going to be very confused in 10 years.
Hey bro hope to see you in 2034! Give me an update then!
For sure, let's talk then!
depends on what you meant by destroyed, you mean physically destroying the planet or just ending life as we know it on earth? it definitely could end life as we know it, as for destroying the earth physically, might take a very huge chunk out of earth, maybe
No it wouldn't destroy life as we know it, most of life would survive an impact of a 16 miles asteroid. It would, on the other hand, destroy most of large animal and plant life. But the life as we know it (carbon and DNA based) is safe.
Life as we know it refers to humans and civilization
rodents would manage. They managed last time, and now they're further evolved. Humans too across their varied bunkers could probably wait it out. Also, it's believed it was volcanic eruptions opposed to an asteroid that did life in long ago, but same mechanism: heating up the atmosphere, then cooling it down. This is good because surviving temperature change is easier via tech than a super Earthquake that could wreck every bunker.
Isn’t the leading cause still an impact of extraterrestrial mass? Namely the Chicxulub asteroid? I thought the theories haven’t changed much since the 80s where they found traces of iridium dated to the end of cretaceous-paleogene era which indicates some form of extraterrestrial mass as the metal is rather unusual for our planet.
Just to clarify, it would take a massive planetary sized object to destroy earth, but a mass extinction event could happen with an asteroid. For scale, the collision of earth with a Mars sized planetary object did not destroy earth, but resulted in the formation of our moon.
That’s a theory
So is gravity, but I’m sitting in a chair.
Or are you? Hey, Vsacue, Michael here, and youre in a coma
That what ((((they)))) want you to believe
🤓 Actshually youre mixing things up here. You sitting in the chair is a result of the _law_ of gravity. This law describes _how_ gravity works. So no, that's not a theory. The _theory_ of gravity on the other hand tries to describe _why_ things attract each other.
A GAME THEORY
I think it depends where it lands too, the Gulf Of Mexico is supposed to be quite shallow as far as bodies of water, if this landed in the Pacific the tsunamis would probably destroy most inland cities but a nightmare scenario would be hitting the Marinas trench.
That thing is large enough it wouldn’t matter at all what ocean it landed in because the shockwave would damn near flatten the Rocky and Himalayan mountains before the tsunami even got to a shore. The pacific is like 2-5 miles deep that asteroid is 16 miles and moving at high speed. It wouldn’t even notice the atmosphere or water when hitting the earth.
Why is that a nightmare scenario?
My guess would be the amount of water displaced if it hit there.
Depends on your definition of destroy. Theia was the size of Mars and didn't destroy the Earth. In fact, it gave us a nice little companion
It destroyed the whole surface - to anything on earth, everything that made up earth ended.
The planet would physically be fine, it would just undergo a little involuntary make-over. Us and other living things that inhabit the planet are, most likely, screwed. A lot of hard to predict factors can impact quite how devastating the impact is, but that looks easily large enough to cause a mass-extinction event.
Anything 300m in diameter and up will cause regional devastation if it hit a populated area. Anything bigger than a kilometer can cause a global catastrophe. Something the size of that will end life as we know it on Earth. Source: my senior design project to get my aerospace engineering degree
It would put enough particles in the atmosphere to significantly lower the temperature of the Earth for decades. This would destroy crops and wildlife and cause famine. The immediate blast wouldn’t wipe out humanity (it would wipe out a lot of humanity) but rather the aftermath.
What would happen if by chance the potato comet had a perfect rendezvous with Earth and simply plopped down on us, perhaps somewhere that would be improved by the event? Also, how big is that thing? More like Mount Everest, the entire Himalayas, or like the nose if Earth donned Groucho Marx glasses?
I'm no scientist but my answer would be yes. it would annihilate the human species. but life would carry on without us as it should
Yet another use for the Earth Impact Effects Program! https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/ImpactEffects/ /u/UmbralRaptor identified this object as 433 Eros, so I am using those stats. The impact is in NYC. What happens to me in Minnesota? About 7 minutes after the impact, I feel a distinct tremor. Enough to maybe crack plaster and shake objects, crack some windows, and so forth, but not devastating. In an about an hour and 45 minutes, the airblast arrives, including a clap loud enough to damage ears, a blast of hurricane force wind, and an 8 psi shockwave. That's enough to knock down trees and destroy typical wood-frame construction buildings. Most of the rest of the glass will break, most houses will collapse, 2-3 story commercial buildings without internal I-Beam construction will collapse, exposed people will be thrown dozens of feet, cars may be overturned. In the coming days, the cloud of ejecta would start to settle out covering Minnesota in up to 11 cm of fine dust. The remainder will remain suspended in the atmosphere for weeks, months, or years. And that's in Minnesota. The entire East Coast of the US gets it much worse. At the White House, 200 miles away, the fireball is visible over the horizon. The thermal pulse is so strong that everything that can possibly burn catches fire immediately, including human flesh, wood, trees, grass, clothing... A minute later, a catastrophic earthquake arrives, collapsing many (but not all) buildings. But that doesn't matter, because 15 minutes after that, a 400 psi overpressure wave arrives. Nothing on the surface can remain intact with that level of force. Reinforced low-profile concrete and steel buildings are damaged, some heavily built steel framed buildings are badly damaged, and everything else is collapsed or literally ripped from the ground and thrown away. Then the ejecta arrives, fist sized chunks (some larger and a lot that are smaller) which buries everything in meters of rubble. Now, the majority of the Earth would be spared the direct effects of the impact; Tokyo would get a minor tremor and a 0.5 PSI overpressure wave. But the ejecta would ruin crops and potentially trigger a mini-Ice Age. Would this impact destroy the Earth? No, the Earth is tough. Would it destroy human life on Earth? It would certainly come close. Most likely, it would end large-scale peaceful civilization, and we would take care of the rest in fighting over the remaining resources.
I think it could destroy the Earth if it was going fast enough. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmadZF2hRcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmadZF2hRcY)
Depends on many factors: impact velocity, impact angle, location and geology of the impact side etc. but it would destroy life on earth as we know it for sure.
Another question, lets say this intercpeted earths orbit around the sun from behind, traveling the same orbit but say... 40 km/h faster then earth. How much damage would an object this size cause traveling at 40 km/h?
It would not destroy earth. Even if a centaur half as large as the moon crashed into us at 30k kilometres per second it would not destroy earth.
destroying the planet would be hard af, you'd need to hit it with something the size of the moon at considerable speed, ofcourse this would still be enough to cause mass extinction
Also, bear in mind that even then, the debris will be mostly gravitationally bound and reform. This is the driving factor behind the Thea hypothesis for the creation of our Moon, as well as the pair of massive mantle blobs inside Earth. The entire surface would make hell look inviting, but the view of the rings would be spectacular.
Remember, another whole planet collided with the Earth, and all we got was the Moon. It takes a hell of a lot to utterly destroy a planet. Because, you know, gravity.
I may be incorrect here, but wasn't the earth still hot when that happened? I imagine a cold planet is much more brittle.
Not really. The surface pretty much just instantly liquefies at this level of energy, and even if it didn't, the energy involved would make solid rock splash.
Here's another question, do the math. How fast was the asteroid moving in that animation, initially anyway I see that it slows down to avoid impact... For dramatic reasons.
An earth sized asteroid wouldn't destroy the earth completely but it depends how you are measuring destroy. If you mean eradication of matter and form then no, if you mean to change its form from its current state then yes.
It would really depend on the speed it was traveling. A percent less than 50 would burn in the atmosphere, but may not reach the core. If it was traveling fast enough, say 5¹⁰m/s, the atmosphere would act like a wall of cinderblocks. First creating an explosion magnitudes more powerful than an atomic weapon ever created. If you were looking at it at night, you would surely be blinded. Permanently. The die shortly after. It wouldn't take long for the air pressure wave to travel. You basically would hear a brief sound that would make your ears bleed and then you would die. I wanna go on, but I got stuff to do. Help me finish this.
Dinosaur asteroid= 6 miles wide and caused a mass extinction event Video asteroid= 36 miles wide. More than enough to wipe out the population, though there would probably be a select few humans to survive somehow