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Asteroid Tsunamis Could be Huge, Slow
Discovery News ^ | June 7 2002 | By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

Posted on 06/09/2002 7:18:17 PM PDT by vannrox


If an asteroid like this one, depicted in an artist's drawing, hit Earth's oceans, it could generate huge waves that would move more slowly than previously thought, but in the end, cause more damage.


Asteroid Tsunamis Could be Huge, Slow


By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News


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June 7 — Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, a new supercomputer model predicts that meteors and asteroids splashing down in the oceans can create waves twice as big, but slower moving, than previous estimates.

In other words, if Earth gets walloped by a sizable chunk of cosmic debris, there's more time to run from the wave, but a much wider potential destruction zone, say researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the simulations were created.

The results of the study were presented June 5 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Albuquerque, N.M. "The previous models were wrong," said Jim Danneskiold, a Los Alamos spokesperson for the team that worked out what is, to date, the most meticulous look at how air, water and the asteroids themselves behave when they smash into the oceans at 45,0000 miles per hour.

Computer scientists Galen Gisler and Bob Weaver used Los Alamos' Blue Mountain supercomputer and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's ASCI White supercomputer to run the simulations.

After three weeks of computing — the equivalent of more than million hours of individual processor time — they were able to work out the fine details of ocean impacts ranging from a quarter kilometer to a full kilometer in diameter. Their imaginary asteroids also ranged in density from heavy iron to lighter-weight rocks.

"One kilometer is about the threshold for global effects," said asteroid researcher Daniel Durda of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The model showed that a one kilometer iron asteroid strikes with the power of 1.5 trillion tons of TNT and produces a spout of water more than twelve miles high, said Gisler.

The simulation also confirmed what was shown in the movie Deep Impact: a big asteroid can produce tsunamis large enough to inundate huge areas. There's even evidence in the Yucatan that the dino killer asteroid that struck there 65 million years ago caused tsunamis that washed over large areas of land, Durda said.

But the real concern isn't just the big impacts, said Durda. Even a moderate to small chunk of rock from space could cause a lot of trouble when it hits the oceans, he pointed out.

For instance, on land, a relatively small, 30 to 50-meter-wide asteroid would create quite a crater and a blast what would cause local damage. The same event in the sea, however, would cause weaves that would scour a much larger area, Durda said.

"We know that the timescale of impacts (makes them) common enough that it warrants our attention," said Durda.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Health/Medicine; History; Reference; Religion; Science; Society; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: asteroid; catastrophism; cosmicdebris; destruction; mikebaillie; planet; simulation; tsunami; tsunamis
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To: 75thOVI; Alice in Wonderland; AndrewC; Avoiding_Sulla; BenLurkin; Berosus; Brujo; CGVet58; Chani; ..
Vannrox' topic, from 2002.

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21 posted on 01/01/2007 9:14:04 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Ahmedumbass and the mullahcracy is doomed. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: vannrox
...Could be Huge, Slow


22 posted on 01/02/2007 4:23:54 PM PST by AndrewC (Duckpond, LLD, JSD (all honorary))
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23 posted on 05/21/2021 5:15:05 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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