Giant comet may collide with Earth late October

Pravda ^ | October 6, 2006

[tlb]

According to the Russian astronomer Nikolai Fedorovsky, a giant comet flying at top speed is bound for Earth. Should the comet stay on the collision course, it may hit the planet in late October. The impact will cause devastating tsunamis, earthquakes and avalanches, says Fedorovsky. He saw the killer comet in a telescope two weeks ago. He managed to calculate the comet’s trajectory. We got in touch with Nikolai Fedorovsky:

“I’m not trying to scare anybody, I just want to warn the public,” sums up Fedorovsky. “We should pay attention to this suspicious celestial body. We could obtain more accurate calculations if other astronomers join forces. We could also photograph it if we’re in luck. We will probably partake in one of the greatest events in the history of humankind,”

[spectre]

And I'm going to eat ALL of my Halloween Candy...

sw

[JRios1968]

I hope you were in the USA then! :)

[JRios1968]

I wonder if the comet strike would sound like a gigantonormous cowbell...

[Allegra]

I hope you were in the USA then! :)

During Election Hell? Oh, I was. It was how I first hooked up with some FReepers during a couple of Stop the Recount rallies in Houston. I had lurked since 1998, and finally joined shortly after that.

Because of that, I have made some wonderful friends with whom I am very close today. We are still mourning the recent passing of one of ours (Flyer.) :-(

The Houston FReeper Chapter is a great bunch!

[Hatteras]

About 85 with tight lugs on a down grade...

[RegulatorCountry]

Oh, even a half mile across would have major, worldwide consquences. The reason I said that about it "only" being a regional catastrophe was that the Russian thinks this is going to hit in the general vicinity of Moscow, with "thousands" killed. That's not a "giant comet." He blew it about "top speed," because this thing cannot be at perihelion, so he's probably full of it anyway.

[RegulatorCountry]

Ewww. Dr. Smith is positively Foleyesque in hindsight. Who was Speaker back then? He should resign! /sarc

[vollmond]

Bush's fault. And, may I add, "Women and Minorities Hardest Hit."

"Hardest Hit" was never more appropriately used. I'm still chuckling.

[AppyPappy]

"We look for showers in the east and doppler radar shows a comet in the northwest. "

[musicman]

"Calling Bruce Willis."

Hmmmm... I saw the movie Armageddon.

I think you'd have a little bit better luck calling Ben Affleck, IMHO....

[bannie]

Even Ihe Enquirer wouldn't touch it: It's WORLD GLOBE stuff! (They're the "BAT BOY" folks, I believe.)

[reagan_fanatic]

[Sloth]

That's it -- I'm maxing out the credit cards. Oh wait, I already did.

[Kozak]

"There is no truth in Pravda"....

[tubebender]

There are a lot of recent wilderness areas this thing could hit and only kill a few dope growers...

[BILL_C]

What's 'top speed' for a 'giant comet', anyway?

Speed of light?

You do remember Einstein, don't you? As you try to move an object faster and faster toward the speed of light, one of the things that happens it takes more and more energy, but the bottom line is you can NEVER get to really close to the speed of light.

From a web site about a previous comet (Hale-Bopp):

http://www.algonet.se/~sirius/eaae/newsl4/hb.htm

Dooms-Day Science Exercise.

A comet speed will increase even further, when entering the inner parts of our Solar System. Comet Hale Bopp will reach a speed around 200 000 km pr hour, while being closest to the Sun (slightly below 1 AU, April 1997).

Convert this speed to the unit meters pr second.

Let the Comet Nucleus have a diameter of say 20 km, let us assume the mass density is equivalent to Ice (0.9 ton/m3).

Now estimate the kinetic Energy of this object.

1 million ton (Megaton) of Plastic TNT explosive releases 1 250 000 000 kWh. 1kWh (kiloWatt hour) is equal to 3 600 000 Joule.

How many Joule is one Megaton TNT?

How many Megatons TNT would a comet impact correspond to?

It is estimated, that the total amount of atomic weapons technically available during a Global Atomic War equals 10 000 Megatons.

How many atomic Wars would such an impact correspond to?

As the figures above show, such an impact would have a most dramatic consequence. Chemical changes may occur, model calculations by NASA suggest that the Earth atmosphere Nitrogen, Oxygen may combine to a kind of smog , which together with water moisture may give acid rain (pH between 0 and 1, corresponding to the strong acid, you find in car batteries).

In addition, dust may shield the sunlight for a year, implying temperature fall to -40 deg.

Luckily, these space-accidents occur seldom; such a global event is only likely to happen once during typically

50 000 000 to 100 000 000 years.

However, on a geological time scale, this kind of impact may have been important. At the end of the K-T period, 65 million years ago, 70-80% of all life on Earth died probably due to such a dramatic impact.

In the very early start of our solar system, these impacts may have been quite frequent, isotopic investigations indicate that most of the water in our oceans may be due to comet impacts.



Comet Hale-Bopp is followed by students and amateurs across all the world as a part of the Astronomy On Line Programme: http://www.eso.org/astronomyonline/.

[Phsstpok]

this doesn't translate from the Russian, but I understand they had an expression something like

"there is no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia"

As I understand it Pravda translates as "truth" in English and Izvestia translates as "news," so the full phrase all in English would be

"there is no truth in Truth and no news in News"

[CAPTAINSUPERMARVELMAN]

whatever.

[Puddleglum]

The truly frightening thing is that it is flying "at top speed." This aint no pokey little ball of slush.

[Xenalyte]

I need to stock up on beer for the "We're All Gonna Die in the Comet Crash" party. I guess I can use the same decorations I recently used for the August 22 "Ahmadinejad's Gonna Nuke Us All" party?

I'd think so, except for added cachet, you need to get a HUGH picture of the FedEx guys talking about how we're all DOOMED!