Posted on 10/17/2004 3:36:42 PM PDT by freedom44
It was just last year that one 'zipped' past only 27,000 miles from earth. It was detected as it was speeding away from earth.
If it were 100 megatons it would have leveled the forest of Germany all the way to Rome. The fireball alone would be 200 miles across.
;')
The most likely cause was a low-density comet, 0.7 miles (1.1 kilometres) wide, that broke up at an altitude of 43 miles and fell in pieces to Earth, the scientists reported in Astronomy Magazine.They wrote: The main mass of the projectile struck the ground at 2,200 miles per hour, releasing an amount of energy equivalent to 106 million tons of TNT.
The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War had an explosive force of just 20,000 tons of TNT.
found this one:
'Asteroid Impact Could Have Prompted Constantine's Conversion'
Ananova ^ | 6-18-2003
Posted on 06/18/2003 4:45:56 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/931431/posts
Wrong, the entire cloud created from a 100 megaton explosion would be about 120km across. 200 mile fireball ?? No way, but the thermal pulse might be felt that far.
Ping!
It is telling that media hyperbole has hugely influenced our collective tendencies towards ascribing far more destructive power to the "megaton" than can be reasonably calculated. I see evidence of this all the time.
The explosion they describe is in the kiloton range. To get megatons the main body would have to strike the ground in the 60,000 miles per hour range, not 2,000.
Table 1 - Risk of direct impact for a given location
Diameter | Kinetic Energy | Area Devastated |
|
||
(m) | Mt TNT | sq km | Earth | "City" | Inhabited Region & Expected Death toll |
50
|
10
|
1900
|
100 yr
|
30 million yr
|
900 yr
1 million
|
100
|
75
|
7200
|
1000 yr
|
70 million yr
|
8000 yr
3 million
|
200
|
600
|
29 000
|
5000 yr
|
90 million yr
|
30 000 yr
14 million
|
500
|
10 000
|
70 000
|
40 000 yr
|
290 million yr
|
180 000 yr
30 million
|
1 km
|
75 000
|
200 000
|
100 000 yr
|
260 million yr
|
290 000 yr
60 million
|
2 km
|
1 million MT
|
-
|
1 million yr
|
-
|
1 million yr
1.5 billion
|
All*
|
90 yr
|
14 million yr
|
800 yr
|
That is why their description of the damage versus the size of the impactor are so wildly out of whack. Their numbers don't jibe.
Ping.
Thanks!
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A blast from the past regarding a blast from the past. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
:’) Well, this was quite a tail...
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GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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