[meteorite-list] Another awful meteorite-related TV event

From: lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu <lebofsky_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 21:17:21 -0700 (MST)
Message-ID: <0dcf96a28d1a7a3eb56a8afeee76e599.squirrel_at_webmail.lpl.arizona.edu>

Hi Sterling:

Sounds more reasonable, if destroying everything is reasonable.

Any idea how often these occur? This is 5 times the diameter of either
Sudbury or Vredefort and these are more than a billion years old.

Maybe this is big enough to punch through the mantle and bury itself in
magma.


Larry


> Hi, Larry, List,
>
> Yes, I am WRONG! However, my mistake was not the
> one you hypothesized. The Wikipedia gives mass in
> kilograms and I reduced the quantity by 1000 to
> convert it to tons (10^18 kg = 10^15 metric tons),
> correctly.
>
> No, it was density. I think in grams per cubic centimeter
> when I think density. Water = 1.0, rock = 2.5, and
> so forth. The training is strong; one thinks in specific
> density. But the online Calculator wants kilograms
> per cubic meter, where water = 1000, rock = 2500, and
> so forth.
>
> So I calculated the impact of a 100 kilometer diameter
> SNOWFLAKE ! One with a specific density of about
> 0.022, a little fat for a snowflake, actually... So, if you
> ever want to know what impact a really big snowflake
> would have, you've got it now.
>
> The actual figures? The energy is 304,000,000,000
> megatons. The crater is 1240 km (770 miles) across
> and would be 2500 meters deep before it fills with
> melt. The impact would melt 2,000,000 CUBIC MILES
> of the Earth's crust, and the melt zone extends to a
> depth of 35 kilometers, which in some places would
> take it down into the mantle itself, and it would
> certainly rebound and produce basalt flooding of
> incomprehensible magnitude, likely enough to flood
> and re-surface an entire continent. The "crater"
> would be a complex multi-ringed basin about the
> same size as the Moon's Mare Imbrium!
>
> Big enough for you now?
>
> This is a continent destroyer. The shock of the impact,
> would be a world-wide Richter Scale 12.3, strong enough
> to kill all animal life. The wind at the antipodeal point to
> the impact would be 385 mph. At just a quarter of the way
> around the planet (10,000 km away), the winds would
> be 835 mph.
>
> The fireball of the impact would be over 300 kilometers
> in diameter (190 miles) and it would be visible for 5570
> kilometers (3500 miles). The thermal flux would be 53
> times brighter than the Sun and everything organic within
> the line of sight would combust. This fireball would persist
> for nearly 8 hours (7 hours 42 minutes) before cooling
> enough to collapse. The shock wave there (3500 miles
> away) would be over 2000 mph, or about Mach 3.
>
> Major extinction event, clearly.
>
> I can't speak to the roaches; no one knows what it takes
> to wipe them out, if indeed it's even possible. Still, at
> the worst, the sulfur-eating thermophiles in the deep
> vents would survive just fine, fat and happy, and they
> could start this evolution thing all over again, something
> they've probably had to do before, as the universal inclusion
> of the 16S rna ribosome in most living things attests to.
>
> A little better?
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu>
> To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
> Cc: <cynapse at charter.net>; "Meteorite List"
> <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 9:03 PM
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Another awful meteorite-related TV event
>
>
>> Hi Sterling:
>>
>> I will admit that, at first, I got the wrong asteroid (though now more
>> interesting composition) and I am never one to say you are wrong,
>> but...
>>
>> YOU ARE WRONG!!!!!
>>
>> Sorry, that felt good!
>>
>> If you go by Wikipedia, you lost 3 zeros 1x10^18 bit 1X10^15. It would
>> be
>> had to believe that a 100-km diameter object (give or take) would make
>> a
>> 40-km hole in the ground unless it was going real slow and hit a
>> really
>> hard surface.
>>
>> Somthing that big would probably make a hole 1000 km or so across (at
>> least), which would make it a bad day even for the roaches.
>>
>> Oh, did I forget to mention:
>>
>> You are wrong! It is a rare day that I get to say that to you
>> Sterling,
>> sorry.
>>
>> Larry
>>
>>> Hi, List,
>>>
>>> To quantify that impact, I went and ran the numbers
>>> through the online Impact Calculator that uses the
>>> Jay Melosh model:
>>> http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
>>>
>>> If 216 Kleopatra is 220 km x 100 km x 100 km, its
>>> volume is 17,278,875.96 km^3 or a total of (take a
>>> deep breath) 1,778,875,960,000,000 m^3. That's
>>> 1.7 quadrillion cubic meters and its mass would be at
>>> least 3.5 quadrillion metric tons. (Dogbone and Potato
>>> asteroids have lots of voids and a high porosity.)
>>>
>>> No, wait! It's 114 Kassandra? Get your Apocalypses
>>> straight, people!
>>>
>>> The volume of 114 Kassandra is less than Kleopatra:
>>> 523,598,644,700,000 cubic meters. The mass of
>>> 114 Kassandra, if rock, has to be at a minimum of
>>> 1,500,000,000,000,000 tons, although some sources
>>> say it's only 1,000,000,000,000,000. That big number
>>> is a Quadrillion tons, in case you want to know.
>>>
>>> OK, it's Kassandra! Smaller, lighter. Really puny.
>>> I gave it an intercept velocity of 47 km/s, a little
>>> slow for an eccentric orbit from the Asteroid Zone,
>>> and an incidence angle of 45 degrees.
>>>
>>> The energy of the collision is 1.20 x 10^24 Joules
>>> or 268,000,000 MegaTons TNT. The Calculator says
>>> "The average interval between impacts of this size
>>> somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years
>>> is 360,000,000 years."
>>>
>>> That energy is the equivalent of an explosion created
>>> by detonating a nuclear arsenal 1800 times bigger
>>> than the entire nuclear arsenals of all the nations of
>>> the world -- at once.
>>>
>>> The final crater diameter is 39.5 km or 24.5 miles;
>>> its final depth is 0.895 km or 0.556 miles. That seems
>>> oddly small for something so big. Why is that? Well,
>>> the Calculator says that the final crater is replaced
>>> by a large, circular melt province. The volume of the
>>> target melted or vaporized is 6410 cubic km or 1540
>>> cubic miles. The melt volume is 2.87 times the
>>> crater volume
>>>
>>> If 114 Kassandra hit Los Angeles, you'd probably be
>>> alright (for a while) if you were in New York City (or
>>> Boston). You'd be alright, that is, if you can withstand
>>> the shock wave which, at that distance, would have
>>> a wind velocity of 140 mph, or a hurricane-level
>>> Force Nine Gale on the Beaufort Scale. Where I live,
>>> it'll be over 205 mph.
>>>
>>> The real problem, I suspect, is in the vaporization of
>>> a substantial percentage of that "melt province." If
>>> 10% of the rock vaporized, or 1.5 trillion tons of rock
>>> vapor would be distributed very quickly through the
>>> atmosphere at temperatures of more than 2000
>>> degrees F. That quantity of rock vapor amounts to
>>> about 20,000 tons of rock vapor per square mile
>>> of the Earth's surface.
>>>
>>> The Impact Calculator does not discuss the contribution
>>> of the asteroid to the mass of rock vapor. I would suggest
>>> that at least 1% of it would survive as "mere" rock vapor
>>> (instead of plasma) -- that's an additional ten trillion tons,
>>> raising the distribution to 110,000 tons of rock vapor per
>>> square mile of the Earth's surface (about 190,000,000
>>> square miles).
>>>
>>> I suggest a very study, fireproofed umbrella would
>>> be a good idea if you plan on going out...
>>>
>>> This is an impact at least 30 to 50 times worse than
>>> the Chicxulub Impact which, it has been suggested,
>>> burned most of the vegetation off the planet with its
>>> rock vapor plume. 114 Kassandra's effect could only
>>> be characterized as the "Krispy Kritter" impact.
>>>
>>> It sounds like a a lousy environment in which to
>>> stage a mini-series. But... That's Entertainment!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sterling K. Webb
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ------ Original Message -----
>>> From: <lebofsky at lpl.arizona.edu>
>>> To: <MeteorHntr at aol.com>
>>> Cc: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 12:03 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Another awful meteorite-related TV
>>> event
>>>
>>>
>>> If Kleopatra were to hit the Earth (at least that is what I get out
>>> of
>>> the
>>> main page), we would be in big trouble. For those of you who do not
>>> remember, 216 Kleopatra, thanks to radar observations, looks very
>>> much
>>> like a big dog bone, 220 kilometers long and 100 kilometers across.
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Darren Garrison" <cynapse at charter.net>
>>> To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2009 11:38 AM
>>> Subject: [meteorite-list] Another awful meteorite-related TV event
>>>
>>>
>>>> http://www.movieweb.com/news/NEn3LrswY8Zyro
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>>
>>
>
Received on Thu 02 Jul 2009 12:17:21 AM PDT