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OneWayTraffic
Joined: 14 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 7:19 am Post subject: |
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| T-J wrote: |
| O.K. so worst case scenario is the complete and utter destruction of every living thing on the face of the planet, got it. Good to know. |
That's far worse than a worst case. Realistic worse case is a repeat of the K-T event that did for the dinosaurs. We're talking a probable 40-80% species loss. Similar to what we're doing right now actually.
There's just no way a asteroid that big could end up on a collision course without a pretty amazing series of events. All the objects of suitable size are captured by planets as moons, or hanging in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's possible that Jupiter could nudge one of the bigger rocks out of it's orbit as happens from time to time, but the likelyhood AFAIK is inversely proportional to the size. Larger equals more inertia. If Jupiter did nudge Ceres or something of similar size out of it's orbit, it's far more likely to end up in a non collision orbit. Even then, most collision orbits wouldn't go in a beeline for the earth, so we'd have years, possibly decades or even centuries of warning. Plenty of time to put a rocket or nuke on the rock and push it off to a safer orbit. If you act early enough, a tiny little impulse is all you need. |
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SHANE02
Joined: 04 Jun 2003
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| Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 8:14 am Post subject: |
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| A Sweet video/audio combo. |
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joshuahirtle27
Joined: 23 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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| SHANE02 wrote: |
| A Sweet video/audio combo. |
The video was okay... but the audio combined with it sucked. It was just... BAD! |
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pest2
Joined: 01 Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 12:15 am Post subject: |
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| joshuahirtle27 wrote: |
So that would probably be destroyed. The tectonic effects and the tidal waves caused by such an impact would undoubtedly knock the earth out of orbit...
Basically the world would become an egg if it wasn't destroyed completely by a 500 Km asteroid. It'd be 9/11 x 180878797978947138556868970182473407.
But I'm not a scientist. |
Im sorta remembering from geophysics class in uni that if the earth collided with a big meteorite like that, it would just sorta consume it and the mass of the meteorite would assimilate to the spherical shape of the earth... Maybe that was a smaller meteorite, though. I think the orbit would change, but it wouldnt completely get knocked out of orbit. It would still be attracted to the gravitational field of the sun, but maybe it would be slightly further away? |
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Gaber
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:44 am Post subject: |
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| 500km isn't a meteor it's a freaking planetoid. That's like the size of Charon. Pretty unlikely, even within the scope of tiny probabilities that you have to deal with when talking about major impacts and human timescales. Cool video, odd choice of song though. |
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Cheonmunka
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
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| Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| A lot of money goes on analysing this space stuff - I do wonder if it is worth it. I mean, if we are hit, we are dead. Landing a nuke on an asteroid in-flight is just bs. We will die. Why spend so much analysing it? |
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brento1138
Joined: 17 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:54 am Post subject: |
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Ahh, life will live on. Thank the cockroaches who will carry on, evolve over billions of years, and eventually become bug-eyed/skinny/white bio-peds who travel far from the future to study us.
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samcheokguy
Joined: 02 Nov 2008
Location: Samcheok G-do
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| Posted: Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:01 pm Post subject: |
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| richtor scale >10 don't exist. That would be 10x the effect of a 9. It would literally rupture an entire plate boundry. |
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