The End of Our World By Asteroid Impact?

I saw this film some time ago and was reminded of it with all the debate about North American extinction events. The video shows how our lives would be over in less than 24 hours if an asteroid 100km (60+ miles) struck our blue planet. The realistic presentation of our swift demise hits you somewhere deep...



The Armagh Observatory has created a map of all the known Near Earth Objects (NEO). The ones in red are the ones that cross Earth's orbit. Fortunately, the super massive asteroids are few and far between. Our current knowledge (NASA Factsheet ) indicates that there aren't any asteroids of this size to worry about.

The Asteroid Belt is full of them, but collisions with Earth are very rare When they DO hit, results look a little like this...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9d0a78c1ec9a.jpg[/atsimg]
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I don't about any of you, but this film scares the **** outta me

reply to post by Kandinsky


So with no possibility for agriculture left, any remaining humans would be those in pre-stocked underground shelters. Or could they even survive such a trauma to the planet...

reply to post by Nicolas_Shadybrook


I don't know. If and it's a big if the underground shelters survived the shockwave, would you want to survive this? I mean, their would be "nothing" left, no plants, animals, nothing. It would be years if not longer before the ground would be suitable to grow anything. I don't know, it'd be an interesting ride, that's for sure.

Thanks for the replies guys

I think I'd prefer to take the easy way out before something like that struck The sick feeling of dread and inevitability of death would be no way to spend the final months, weeks and hours. The few people evacuated to bunkers might not survive the seismic waves that would ripple through the Earth's crust. If they did, would they return 'blinking in the light of a new dawn' or find a world back to square one? I've no doubt life would survive in some form, but for anything larger than microbes I guess it would be the end.

We're not much in the scheme of things, just a tiny blue planet in the backside end of the Milky Way. Still, even if nobody would miss us, it seems profound that the 4.5 billion years that led up to us could come to nothing....

a 60k wide asteroid would be a world ender for sure.

if you were as far away as possible an underground structure might survive.
Why even try to survive.

After everything was burned off it would be years before the clouds dispersed and allowed the sun back to the earth.
It would take millions of years for the full effects of such an impact to go away.

An impact that large would would certainly cause the formation of a large igneous province at its anti podal hot spot, just like the chixalub impact caused the deccan traps and the cambrian impact caesed the siberian traps.

Millions of years worth of lava outflows would complicate things.


There has been some work to indicate that if the object was big enough or going fast enough that, even if it just passed through the atmosphere it would heat the atmosphere to incandesance.

It happens more often than people want to beleive

Here let me scare you some more

impact database

It can happen really any time. However, it did not happen for tens of thousands of years (understatement). So if it will not happen for just another century, if not several decades - we will have the tools to deal with this kind of threat for sure.
I think that if anything is really threatening survival of humans , it is our technological progress only. We can wipe us out with much higher probability then any other doom scenario and of course we will change into cyborgs and then to non-biological life forms. Those two dangers to our civilization are much more real and even probable, not just possible.
Of course, we have to prepare ourself for asteroid life-ending event in any case.

Ever have one of those dreams that is real and vivid that it makes a lasting impression on you?
About ten years ago I had one that still leaves a mark.

In my dream I was an old man (70'ish) and I was walking my dog, wishing my wife was there, but she wasnt and after I woke I figured she had allready passed in my dream reality.
Then to the west I saw a giant fireball racing through the sky.

It dissappeared over the horizon and then there was a tremendous flash to the southwest. In my dream I knew this was it, and I sat down on the canal bank with my dog and watched hell approach from the south.
the sky turned a bright red as it heaved and swirled with flame and smoke.
Just before it hit the earthquakes arivved and the whole world seemed to jump and heave, and just as I could see the vinyards and orchards in the distance getting swept up by the conflageration, I awoke terrified and drenched in sweat.

The wierd thing is I will be 72 in 2036, and and the path that the object took is about right for the path appophis will take if it impacts.
It has ben predicted that if it impacts it will be off the west coast of the southern us or central america.

I had this dream 6 years before the discovery of appophis

reply to post by punkinworks09


Don't sweat, we're safe from Apophis according to NASA, Pravda, on the other hand have a whole different take on things

While trajectory knowledge was substantially corrected by the Arecibo data, a small estimated chance of impact (less than 1 in 45,000 using standard dynamical models) remained for April 13, 2036. With Apophis probably too close to the Sun to be measured by optical telescopes until 2011, and too distant for useful radar measurement until 2013, the underlying physics of Apophis' motion were considered to better understand the hazard.

NASA

Every week in the UK some 2-3 million people buy lottery tickets with odds of 14 billion to 1 and think they have a chance of winning. Almost makes 1 in 45 000 a safe bet by comparison

reply to post by Kandinsky


If it passes through the magic window in its 2029 pass then the odds go up for an impact in 2036

Although the odds are a slim 1-45,000 you still have a better chance of dying in large body impact than in an airplane crash

And appophis isnt big enough to cause the end of the world scenario,

but it was still a a very creepy dream coincidence.


It happens far more than people realize,

what got ,is it goodyear?, to take a closer look at a NA impact was mammoth tusks from siberia that are buckshoted by tektites and they are about 45k years old.

Then theres burkle crater in the indian ocean, large impact about 4.5?K years ago, it might be the source for middleastern, african and indian flood myth.
And of course tunguska.

The crater fields of west texas and new mexico arent that old and the place looks like the moon.

Well the video states that the meteor was 500km wide. Even hiding underground probably wouldn't save you. As the video showed, near the point of impact you can see what is called a land tsunami consuming Japan. The entire country was thrown into the air and obliterated. That being said, something like that would also rip away the ground probably several miles deep. For the areas not effected by the land tsunami, the heat generated would create many toxic gasses much like a volcano does as well as the atmosphere would be stripped away. So even underground it would only be a matter of time before your air ran out.

Heres a great site that you can put in the data (size, speed, impact angle etc) and see what would happen.

Meteor impact data fun

There was a really great show I watched about a meteor impacting in the Yucatan and followed the story of a couple of different groups of survivors around the world. I cant remember the name of it and have looked on google with no luck.

If anyone else has seen it, please post the name of it. There were different groups of people surviving.

1. was a couple of astronomers at an observatory in Hawaii
2. was a Couple and their daughter in France or England
3. was a guy in Mexico close to the impact that managed to get into a bunker just in time

Damn, now I want to watch it again!!! So please!!! anyone who remembers this show post the name of it.

It was either on the Discovery Channel or BBC, i've looked on both but..... no luck

Kind of makes you wish you were an elitist, who had information from ancients and aliens, and all the money in the world to build a bunker and outlive this catastrophe, doesn't it?

Doesn't sound much like a conspiracy, in that context.

God, save the intelligent and noble.

O-315

Originally posted by punkinworks09

The wierd thing is I will be 72 in 2036, and and the path that the object took is about right for the path appophis will take if it impacts.
It has ben predicted that if it impacts it will be off the west coast of the southern us or central america.

It's impossible to predict where Apophis will hit - if by chance it does hit. In any case, it's so small it won't have a major global impact, although it wouldn't be nice to be under it and if, as more likely, it hits an ocean there'll be some serious tsunamis causing widespread coastal destruction. Millions might die. But life will go on as before. And it'll only take a few weeks at current birth rates for us replimish human population.

A much bigger impactor is a different matter with the risk of nuclear winter affecting the planet for several year. But such big objects are extremely rare.

If this has happened six time before and all life on Earth was destroyed each time; where did all of us come from?

reply to post by QBSneak000
If you're interested, here's a PDF from Scientific American. It's eight pages of condensed excellence. It focuses on the Wabar Meteorite Site and explains in understandable terms the processes of an impact. Example...

...the largest object that hit Wabar was between 8.0 and 9.5 meters in diameter, assuming that the impact velocity was seven or five kilometers per second, respectively. The aggregate mass of the original meteoroid was at least 3,500 tons. Its original kinetic energy amounted to about 100 kilotons of exploding TNT. After the air braking, the largest piece hit with an energy of between nine and 13 kilotons. Although the Hiroshima bomb released a comparable amount of energy, it destroyed a larger area, mainly because it was an airburst rather than an explosion at ground level. At the point of impact, a conelike curtain of hot fluid—a mixture of the incoming projectile and local sand— erupted into the air. This fluid became the black glass. The incandescent curtain of molten rock expanded rapidly as more and more of the meteorite made contact with the ground.

There are a great many objects that size that share our orbit. It struck in the 1930s in the Empty Quarter of the Sahara. Impacting in a heavily populated area would probably make history. Where the article refers to Hiroshima being an 'airblast,' we have an example of what happens when an ET airblast occurs in Earth's atmosphere...

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Tunguska!

reply to post by Kandinsky


Asteroid smashroid.

Never will the earth be cream-mated.

Higher intelligence whatever that may be has always been at work.

Earth would be gone long long before if it wasn't the case.

Surely, undoubtedly.

reply to post by Essan



A couple of months ago an astro physicist, published
a possible path it would take, IF it hits, hes pretty sure it would come down some where along a line running from about 600 miles off of san dieago to crossing over costa rica to the carribean.

It was a fascinating paper.

yes apophis is not a world ender but I would hate to be within several hundred miles of an impact of that size.

Its comets that we really have to worry about, with just showing up and extremely high velocites.

reply to post by Kandinsky

The Asteroid Belt is full of them, but collisions with Earth are very rare When they DO hit, results look a little like this...

Gulf of Mexico -

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/00839229b83f.jpg[/atsimg]

Hudson Bay -

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/03561ff58c85.jpg[/atsimg]

heres one to chew on a crater in antactica thats 300k across

en.wikinews.org...

yikes