Celestia Forums

How would one determine the resulting geological and environmental results of a comet striking the earth?

If the hypothetical comet was twice the size of the Chicxulub impactor or 20km in diameter, 90% of the mass consisting of water ice.

The Chicxulub impactor was 10km in diameter and released 400 zettajoules of energy at impact.

giving the hypothetical impactor a volume of 4188.79 km^3, water mass of 376,991,100 kg, and the remaining mass of rock being 41,887,900kg.

The amount of water at impact would be 3769.91 km^3 or less than a millionth of a percent of the total volume of the Atlantic ocean.

Now, figuring that the water would be vaporized almost immediately upon entering the atmosphere, the remain rock mass would have a volume of 418.879 km^3

Since the ice would most likely not be a physical aspect of the impact, just the explosive force of the vaporizing ice directed toward a specific area on the planet, along with the remaining rock composite of the impactor, what would be the immediate effects of such an object?

How would one calculate the environmental impact, crater size, etc.

Since the amount of water added to the ecosphere is negligible, and the resulting vaporization of said water would result in hydrogen, oxygen and ozone being added to the upper atmosphere, would the impact be less damaging than that of a solid object of equal size?

Maybe this can be of some help:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

Nice link, but when I attempted to open the details PDF document at the bottom of the page Adobe gives me an error. (I've informed the webmaster)

LordFerret wrote:Nice link, but when I attempted to open the details PDF document at the bottom of the page Adobe gives me an error. (I've informed the webmaster)

LordFerret, I downloaded it just now, without any problem, as you can see in the image.
It's a 24 page document, IMO interesting, named CollinsEtAl2005.pdf, size 1637 KB.
I fear the problem is on your side, sorry.
Bye

Andrea

Growler, I think you are vastly overestimating the effects of the atmosphere. The vast majority of an ice impactor (20km in diameter) would not be vaporized upon entering the atmosphere. Anything with a diameter greater than a few tens of meters across would have a surface impact whether it is rock or ice.

The other thing not mention is the velocity of the impactor, I assume that it’s a comet being all ice so it’s going to be less dense then a asteroid, however it probably traveling three times faster than an asteroid which would make the total energy a wash

So in short there is not a lot of difference between a 20km piece of rock or a 20km piece of ice slamming into the planet. Both would be equality as devastating.

ANDREA wrote:

LordFerret wrote:Nice link, but when I attempted to open the details PDF document at the bottom of the page Adobe gives me an error. (I've informed the webmaster)

LordFerret, I downloaded it just now, without any problem, as you can see in the image.
It's a 24 page document, IMO interesting, named CollinsEtAl2005.pdf, size 1637 KB.
I fear the problem is on your side, sorry.
Bye

Andrea

Downloading the document and opening it with Adobe Reader made the difference. I don't know why it wouldn't open in the browser (it should have).

LordFerret wrote:Downloading the document and opening it with Adobe Reader made the difference. I don't know why it wouldn't open in the browser (it should have).

LordFerret, I think you use Firefox, correct?
If yes, I think that the problem is due to it.
I have two PCs, one with Firefox, and on this one I cannot open pdf files, while I can do it using IE Explorer on the other PC.
Bye.

Andrea

ANDREA wrote:

LordFerret wrote:Downloading the document and opening it with Adobe Reader made the difference. I don't know why it wouldn't open in the browser (it should have).

LordFerret, I think you use Firefox, correct?
If yes, I think that the problem is due to it.
I have two PCs, one with Firefox, and on this one I cannot open pdf files, while I can do it using IE Explorer on the other PC.

Andrea, just FYI, I can open PDF files via Firefox.
Do you have the latest updates for the extension and plug-ins?

Again, just FYI.
Thanks, Bob

BobHegwood wrote:Andrea, just FYI, I can open PDF files via Firefox.
Do you have the latest updates for the extension and plug-ins?Bob

Hey Bob, thank you for this.
I have 3.05, but after your message I searched and downloaded 3.06, going to install it after sending this post.
Regarding extensions and plug-ins, I have many of them, but none looks involved with pdf files.
Could you please give me the name or address?
Thanks a lot.
Bye

Andrea

ANDREA wrote:Regarding extensions and plug-ins, I have many of them, but none looks involved with pdf files.
Could you please give me the name or address?

On my Windows system, I'm using Shockwave Flash 10.0 R12,
Adobe Acrobat, Shockwave for Director Version 11.0, and two additional
download add-ons which are in use on my system only because I bought
the associated download manager. They are getPlus for Adobe 15235
and Adobe DLM (powered by getPlus(R)) 1.5.2.35.

Only the DLM is an extension, and all others are plug-ins which are
freely available from the Mozilla web site.

EDIT:
See the page located HERE for more info.
Dunno if that helps or not, but that's the best I can do.

Andrea,

I'm using Iceweasel, which is the Debian Linux version of Firefox - it's basically the same thing. I've got 3 plugins running but they're not related to Adobe. I usually can view PDF files, but this is the first time I've run across one which generated an error. The error was generated by Adobe, not by the browser (see below)...


Anyway, it's an interesting paper.

Thank you both, guys.
I found at the address given by Bob the following addon
PDF Download by Nitro PDF Software
here
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/636
that allows opening directly the pdf files in my system.
Thanks a lot.
Bye

Andrea

http://www.adobe.com/ <= get Adobe Reader 9 version

symaski62 wrote:http://www.adobe.com/ <= get Adobe Reader 9 version

Bah, the Reader has become a bloated, slow, big piece of chunk. Never ever again I will use it. FoxIt is a bit better, but it also developing into the direction of the Reader.

I want something small and fast; and screw 3D editing and script execution within PDFs, who needs these things? They only make the program more vulnerable and the whole thing slower.