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19 comments to "If Earth was hit by a Meteor"
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matt
July 3rd, 2008 at
1:16 pm
i have an odd question for the astronomy peeps out there… why is it, in the second video, that the meteor is shown as an inwardly-glowing hot item, even when outside of the Earth’s atmosphere? that set off a red flag to me, but that gut instinct must be naively wrong. so, what’s up with small, scalding hot bodies traveling through our solar system? aren’t comets balls of much and “ice?”
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nocedhal
July 3rd, 2008 at
1:18 pm
fake, is physically impossible for a celestial object as large, go unnoticed by the giant gravities of jupiter and the physical after the shock wave is too perfect as if there were no reactions mountains
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superbad
July 3rd, 2008 at
2:39 pm
“fake”
Well, that was an astute observation.
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anon
July 3rd, 2008 at
2:39 pm
Take a deep breath and relax. This is Discovery, not ILM.
The main point here is that if a meteor hits, we’re boned.The major lifesaver for us thus far has been the asteroid belt. One planet died or didn’t form and we live. Kinda poetic isn’t it?
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CheeseDuck
July 3rd, 2008 at
2:48 pm
Photoshopped!
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matt
July 3rd, 2008 at
2:51 pm
well, i still think my question is valid. badastronomy dot com often takes popular scifi movies and gets into the reality of the physics and what-not, for fun, and iirc they occasionally pick apart TLC and DISC shows. i was just curious. i might forward this on to an astronomer i know and ask him.
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avraamov
July 3rd, 2008 at
3:00 pm
figuring all that out is more than just astronomy. physics, geology, hydrology. homeopathy as well. mustn’t forget THEM.
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mu
July 3rd, 2008 at
3:15 pm
Yes, comets are, essentially, dirty snowballs but this is an asteroid not a comet. Asteroids are usually made of rock. The composition doesn’t matter that much anyway, what matters is the kinetic energy and that depends on the mass and the square of the object’s speed. All that kinetic energy has to go somewhere and most of it would end up as heat.
nocedhal, I’m not sure what you’re saying but: Jupiter has nothing to do with this. Mountains are too small to have any noticeable effect on something like this; Everest is only 9km high and we’re dealing with something 500km in diameter. A billiard ball would be a lot rougher than the Earth if you scaled it up to the size of the Earth.
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Xinavera
July 3rd, 2008 at
3:21 pm
Matt is actually right. The only reason the asteroid (and make no mistake, this is an asteroid, not a meteorite) would be glowing initially is if it were cooling from a recent impact. Sloppy job on the part of Discovery Channel or whoever does their CGI, but the point remains that we’re well and truly screwed in the unlikely event that something like this happens.
However, nocedhal, it is quite possible for large objects like this to go “unnoticed”. We like to think that we’ve got all the large stuff out there, but they’re still finding smaller earth-crossers (~1km) with some regularity that would still cause us a world of hurt.
Furthermore, at the scale of this impact, mountain ranges, ocean floors and other diffraction sources are totally insignificant to the propagating blast wave. It makes a difference when the scale of the object is similar to that of the wave, but not for something this big.
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EP
July 3rd, 2008 at
5:28 pm
But we have Superman, right?
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Christophe
July 3rd, 2008 at
5:29 pm
It’s glowing because it’s was borrowed from the ‘5th element’ movie.
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raith50
July 4th, 2008 at
8:12 am
What is the soundtrack music anyone got any idea
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Ali S.
July 4th, 2008 at
9:06 am
@ raith50
I am unsure for the 1st video but for the 2nd video it’s called “Casino” from the movie “Run Lola Run”.
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Neo S.
July 4th, 2008 at
10:49 am
hey check this out:
http://pya.cc/pyaimg/pimg.php?imgid=43293
hit the play button. -
easy_mac
July 4th, 2008 at
11:34 pm
The thought of something like that occurring during my lifetime scared the bejeezus out of me.
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Some Canadian Skeptic
July 5th, 2008 at
10:58 am
Don’t mean to sound like a doomsday’er or nothing, but in 2029 the asteroid ‘Apophis” will zing right past us (closer than even our geo-sync satellites!). Earth’s gravity will alter its trajectory just enough that when Apophis comes back around in 2036, it will slam into us. I don’t know if it’s as big as the one in the video though….
just sayin.
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Mike Webster
July 7th, 2008 at
2:00 pm
From the stated speed and measuring the time it takes to reach an apparent diameter of 1/4 the earth, the red-glowing phase occurs ~2000 miles up. This is inside the exosphere, so some heating is possible from that. There’s also a consideration of tidal forces, where the leading edge is being pulled on harder than the trailing one.
I haven’t run all the numbers, but it’s entirely possible that it would be starting to melt down at that height.
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crankshaft
July 8th, 2008 at
1:15 pm
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We’re all doomed! Arghhhh!!!!
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Steven
July 8th, 2008 at
4:07 pm
@Some Canadian Skeptic
Apophis is no longer considered as a threat to our planet. No worries there
First probable impact will be in 16 march 2880 with ‘1950 DA’ but it’s not sure it depends on the asteroid’s spin pole. 1950 DA is about 1.1 km wide.
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