Meteorite Question

I'm not sure which forum I could ask this so I'll assume this is the right forum.

I'm curious to know different scenarios of what would happen if a 10km wide meteorite hit the Earth on land or if it hit in the ocean.

I say that both on land or sea it wouldn't matter, the speed of impact hitting our atmosphere will do the most exstensive damage, and that'll be horrible for alot of of fellow humans.

Instant death.

But the scenerio of land could create massive earthquakes and maybe even trigger alot of of volcanos.
The ocean or sea will be as bad but the long term effect will be polluted waters as worm wood.

Period it would be bad!!!!!!

If it hit an ocean or sea the surrounding coastline cities would get a moderate-large tsunami... there would be death and destruction.

If it hit land it would have different effects on different places.
It could hit a dry climate and kick up dust, it could hit Antarctica and melt a couple of big sized glaciers and it could hit a tropical region and just devastate some of the area.

Don�t expect it to end the world�

Well, according to the Earth Impact Effects Program, this is what would happen. The inputs I used are for what I would think of as an "average" 10 km asteroid.

Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 10.00 km = 6.21 miles
Projectile Diameter: 10000.00 m = 32800.00 ft = 6.21 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 17.00 km/s = 10.56 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 1000 kg/m3
Target Type: Ice

Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 1.13 x 1023 Joules = 2.71 x 107 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 5.8 x 107years

Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.

Crater Dimensions:
Transient Crater Diameter: 68.6 km = 42.6 miles
Transient Crater Depth: 24.3 km = 15.1 miles


Final Crater Diameter: 120 km = 74.3 miles
Final Crater Depth: 1.25 km = 0.776 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 711 km3 = 171 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 192 meters = 631 feet

Well, in my opinion it would penetrate the Earth's crust and spew billions upon billions of tons of magma everywhere. Then it would cause a very long cycle of magma pushing down on the crust, then melting the crust as it was pushed into the Earth, then spewed back out again.

But 10 km wide is pretty huge! And the Earth's crust is only somewhere around the lines of 8 miles thick.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
Well, according to the Earth Impact Effects Program, this is what would happen. The inputs I used are for what I would think of as an "average" 10 km asteroid.

Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.

Crater Dimensions:
Transient Crater Diameter: 68.6 km = 42.6 miles
Transient Crater Depth: 24.3 km = 15.1 miles


Final Crater Diameter: 120 km = 74.3 miles
Final Crater Depth: 1.25 km = 0.776 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 711 km3 = 171 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 192 meters = 631 feet

Okay, so that's actually smaller than the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, then. I'm sure we've got craters that size here on the Earth (and on the Moon as well.)

Originally posted by ChrisRT
If it hit an ocean or sea the surrounding coastline cities would get a moderate-large tsunami... there would be death and destruction.

If it hit land it would have different effects...

Don’t expect it to end the world…

LOL, maybe if you call hundreds meter high tsunami as moderate.

It doesn't matter where it hits, or actually differences are just insignificant.

And it really wouldn't be end of the world, just end of our civilization/mankind.

Imagine: NASA scientists announce they have detected a 10-mile-wide asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. They calculate it will hit Southeast Asia in two weeks. There is no chance of Bruce Willis being sent on a beefed-up space shuttle to blow up the asteroid. Earthlings will have to ride out the impact.

People in Brazil feel less vulnerable than most of the world's population. They are on the opposite side of the Earth from the predicted impact point. But one hour after the impact Brazilians notice some brilliant meteors. Then more meteors. Soon the sky gets brighter and hotter from the overwhelming number of meteors. Within a few minutes trees ignite from the fierce radiant heat. Millions of fragments of rock, ejected into space by the blast, are making a fiery return all over the planet.

Only people hiding underground survive the deadly fireworks display. Within three hours, however, massive shock waves from the impact travel through the Earth's crust and converge on Brazil at the same time. The ground shakes so violently that the ground fractures and molten rock spews from deep underground. Maybe Brazil wasn't the best place to be after all.

The survivors of the firestorms, tsunami and massive earthquakes emerge to a devastated landscape. Within a few days the Sun vanishes behind a dark thick cloud -- a combination of soot from the firestorms, dust thrown up by the impact and a toxic smog from chemical reactions. Photosynthesis in plants and algae ceases and temperatures plummet. A long, sunless Arctic winter seems mild compared to the new conditions on most of the planet.

After a year or so the dust settles and sunlight begins to filter through the clouds. The Earth's surface starts warming up. But the elevated carbon dioxide levels created by the fires (and, by chance, vaporization of huge quantities of limestone at the impact site) results in a runway greenhouse effect. Those creatures that managed to survive the deep freeze now have to cope with being cooked.

www.space.com...

There is ample evidence of a global firestorm at the time of the Chicxulub impact. Iridium-bearing clay in the boundary layer between the Cretaceous Period (a time when dinosaurs roamed) and Tertiary Period (the subsequent geologic time frame when dinosaurs seem to have disappeared) contains soot.

The quantity and composition of the soot corresponds to the burning of at least 50 percent of the world's forests. Although Hurdle's idea that methane fires were responsible for this firestorm is plausible, there is another simpler explanation.

The Chicxulub impact would have launched millions of tons of rock into ballistic space flight. Over the following hour this debris would have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere at high speed, causing millions of brilliant "shooting stars." The radiant heat from these meteors alone would have been sufficient to ignite the trees around the world.

www.space.com...

Radiant heat would have been enough to even vaporize meters thick layer of seawater and boil some meters more.

I don't think something this big would be a "MeteorITE" I think it gets classification as a Meteor.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
Well, according to the Earth Impact Effects Program, this is what would happen. The inputs I used are for what I would think of as an "average" 10 km asteroid.

Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 10.00 km = 6.21 miles
Projectile Diameter: 10000.00 m = 32800.00 ft = 6.21 miles
Projectile Density: 1500 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 17.00 km/s = 10.56 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 1000 kg/m3
Target Type: Ice

Energy:
Energy before atmospheric entry: 1.13 x 1023 Joules = 2.71 x 107 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth during the last 4 billion years is 5.8 x 107years

Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and loses negligible mass.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.

Crater Dimensions:
Transient Crater Diameter: 68.6 km = 42.6 miles
Transient Crater Depth: 24.3 km = 15.1 miles


Final Crater Diameter: 120 km = 74.3 miles
Final Crater Depth: 1.25 km = 0.776 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 711 km3 = 171 miles3
Roughly half the melt remains in the crater , where its average thickness is 192 meters = 631 feet

Nice post. I think many or all human will die. Or I doent know if it its the whater

I don't think something this big would be a "MeteorITE" I think it gets classification as a Meteor.

Actually, a Meteorite is a meteor that makes it to the earths surface, big or small. So if one that size, or any size hit earth, it would be called a meteorite...if it doesn't hit earth, it's called a meteor.

Hrm intresting. Thanks for correcting me sensfan even astronomers can learn something new in their own feild. I just always though a meteor was anything that makes it in or through earths atmopshere and an asteroid is anything outsied. I never thought to think if there was a difference between meteors and meteorites.

No problem...

Asteroid - Any of numerous small celestial bodies that revolve around the sun, with orbits lying chiefly between Mars and Jupiter and characteristic diameters between a few and several hundred kilometers. Also called minor planet, planetoid.

Meteor - bright trail or streak that appears in the sky when a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by friction with the earth's atmosphere

Meteorite - A stony or metallic mass of matter that has fallen to the earth's surface from outer space.

Thanks to dictionary.com

Originally posted by sensfan
Thanks to dictionary.com

Which forgets very important thing...
Meteoroids, which are all those "grains" of sand and chips of rock in solar systems.

Boundary between meteoroids and asteroids is commonly thought to be somewhere around ten meters.

When hitting to atmosphere all meteoroids cause meteor aka shooting stars. So meteor doesn't mean anything physical, it's just name for phenomenon caused by meteoroid.

When something solid survives to surface it's called as meteorite. (so asteroid impacting earth could be called as meteorite)