Posted on 03/27/2007 11:15:53 AM PDT by blam
China and US at highest risk of damage from asteroids
14:01 27 March 2007
NewScientist.com news service
David Shiga
Simulations show the asteroid impact locations that would produce the most casualties in red. The Pacific coast of Asia is a particularly deadly place for an asteroid to strike because of tsunamis, while a direct strike on some densely populated inland areas could also cause a heavy toll (Illustration: Nick Bailey et al/University of Southampton)
The worst places for an asteroid to strike in terms of infrastructure damage are shown here in red, with the north Atlantic appearing prominently (Illustration: Nick Bailey et al/University of Southampton) China and the US are the countries most vulnerable to damage from future asteroid impacts, according to preliminary new research. Sweden also ranks surprisingly high in this first attempt at quantifying the risks of impact effects, such as tsunamis, on individual nations.
Scientists have been able to simulate the propagation of tsunamis, earthquakes, and debris from virtual asteroid impacts for years. But previously, there has been no software to quantify the human toll on particular countries.
Now, researchers have combined impact effects with data on population density and infrastructure location in a computer model to produce the first global ranking of countries based on their vulnerability to impact damage.
Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton, UK, led the development of the new software. The team used the model to simulate thousands of impacts at points all over the Earth, building up statistics on which countries tended to be the worst affected the most often.
They considered a range of impact energies corresponding to asteroids between 100 and 500 metres across, striking with typical solar system speeds of about 20 kilometres per second.
Earth at night
The team focused on smaller asteroids
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Brilliant !
We're sitting pretty, here. 'Course, when the Yellowstone caldera blows will be when we get hit. :-)
If the issue is population density, it seems like Europe and Japan ought to be at greater risk than the US.
And their own map shows that Israel is at greater risk than the US.
My suspicion is that this is another one of those "sky is falling" stories.
I always thought Big Ben and the Empire State Building were most at risk?
I'm prepared.
Our highest risk is the US Senate.
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The more dangerous our planet gets from the people living on it, from politicians to terrorists, the more the media pushes these natural catastrophe scenarios.
Since 70+ per cent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, that's about the percentage of impacts which occur on water.
I think the researchers are under the influence of the idea that, if an asteroid hits the ocean, it will result in huge tsunamis, and therefore the eastern seaboard of NA will be especially vulnerable to an impact anywhere in the Atlantic. Likewise, the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent (areas adjacent to the Bay of Bengal) is very low land above sealevel, so tsunamis resulting from impact (so they would say) would roll far inland. Israel lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, but the land rises quickly to the east and north. My guess is that an impact would have to be in the eastern end -- IOW, east of the low bottom that lies between Libya/Tunisia and Italy/Albania/Greece -- of the Med to be more of a risk to Israel than it would be to, say, Egypt. 99 per cent of Egypt's population lives in the Nile Valley.
Looks like the map is red in the upper reaches of the Indus, which also makes sense from the standpoint of the exposure of the highest population in lowest areas.
But anyway, most of the world's population lives within 1000 feet of sealevel. The energy delivered by a big-as-teroid wouldn't necessarily result in much of a wave; the energy translated from a sudden stop would be throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. IMHO of course.
Any news about the demagnetization of the earth?
How about supervolcanoes?
We need political sponsors for each of these impending disasters.
Just sayin'...
YA THINK??!!
What gave it away?
Unless the Long Valley Caldera near Mammoth, CA beats Yellowstone to the punch. It's considered not quite as dangerous but will leave a big sting when it goes again.
Say there is a mid-Atlantic strike (think Deep Impact). Yes, 90% of the U.S. survives, but the survivors are not uniformly distributed across society. Certain industries are concentrated on the seaboard, and they are lost (for example, a few years ago a hurricane caused nationwide disruptions by disabling a credit card processing center). While the U.S. struggles to recover, the Islamofascists see this as the hand of Allah and begin to cause problems across the globe. Perhaps Iran and Israel trade a few nukes. Perhaps
And of course, through it all, the libs will be stuck on stupid and blaming Bush.
"Course, when the Yellowstone caldera blows will be when we get hit"
Upside will be that some of the best areas for growing grapes for wine will be on south slope of the downwind edge of the crater here in Kansas. (Think positively!)
BTW, I grew up near Shawnee Mission.
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