Let's just end this: Meteors cannot move Earth.

A 2 mile wide meteor at 70km/s wouldn't even be able to move Earth because it simply does not have the momentum.

Let's see... 5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms vs. a 2km diameter (3.5 g/cm^3) meteor that might create 100 - 1000 gigaton...

meh... P=mv... 5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms (512.7 m/s speed towards sun)... euh...

(4.19e15 grams for a 2km spherical meteor)(3.5)(70km/s maximum impact speed)= 1.026E21

Were there people that were saying that a meteor could move the Earth? The idea of that sounds preposterous. In my mind, if an object was big enough to move the Earth hit the Earth, it very well may just destroy the Earth.

i'm not one to argue needlessly...ok I am.

You state that a meteor couldn't move the earth and then concede in your own post that it wouldn't be very much..all those numbers look really scientifical and all...does a fly move an ocean liner? yup. Just not very much. What's the point?


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Good to know.

That will help me get through the night.

Peter.

It doesn't have to move the Earth to destroy a majority of the life on it. Just ask the dinosaurs......oh wait.....

So many people saying that a nuke or meteor is going to dramatically change the Earth's movement and rotation that I thought I might be able to clear things up a bit.

Originally posted by die_another_day
A 2 mile wide meteor at 70km/s wouldn't even be able to move Earth because it simply does not have the momentum.

Perhaps not...but it can sure knock it around some...

Tiny diamonds on Santa Rosa Island give evidence of cosmic impact
The tiny diamonds were buried below four meters of sediment and they correspond with the disappearance of the Clovis culture –– the first well-established and distributed North American peoples. An estimated 35 types of mammals and 19 types of birds also became extinct in North America about this time.www.eurekalert.org...

www.kelowna.com...


[edit on 29-7-2009 by JohnnyCanuck]

OMG how wrong you are.

Just walking or moving ANY mass DOES ACTUALLY have an effect on the earth.

Someone will come along shortly and give you the long answer.

reply to post by bismarcksea


so 1 extra mm/s towards the sun is significant compared to the 500m/s that we usually go towards the sun?


The only recently recorded event that had actually affected the Earth's movement was the Kilauea eruption which cause a what... 14 second delay in the day? Tsar Bomba didn't even do as much as that.


Ya'll are talking about how dinosaurs died because of a meteor or something. Sure life died, but the planet is fine. Earth will be a beautiful blue sphere in the middle of randomness for a dozen more billion years.


A nuke is not going to cause the Earth to rotate 90 deg..

The reason life is extinguished by large meteors is multiple - none of which are related to the planet actually moving all that much.

You're looking instead at tsunami, shock waves causing increased volcanic and seismic activity, multiple hazardous meteors, oh yeah, and the big one? a global cloud of debris, effectively blocking out sunlight for years, just like a really really bad nuclear winter..

Originally posted by die_another_day

Earth will be a beautiful blue sphere in the middle of randomness for a dozen more billion years.

I'm afraid that's not true. Our sun is a dwarf star and will expand as it ages. In roughly four to five billion years it will have expanded far enough to have swallowed this planet, actually all of the inner planets.

That's why we have to find a way off this rock.

It doesn't matter what kind of time scale you wish to place on it, our future is out there among the stars. We have no choice.

In my set of physics it moves albeit little.
How signifficant is this little movements as to the fate of the plannet?
Well that is kinda chaotic...you never know!
That millimitre might be catastrophic while a much more signifficant movement would not matter.

I guess it all ballances out in the course of things within wastness and timelessness.

So was a lot of people on ATS saying this or did you just happen to run by an article with a bunch of numbers saying it can't happen and you decided to make a thread out of it so that you can look smart?


One would think that an object going fast enough to knock us out of orbit would just run right through us and completely destroy Earth. It would be like throwing a snowball at another snowball.