whats more worse: asteriod hit on land or water?

reply to post by whiteblack


I think an asteroid hitting land would be far worst. A lot of people would die instantly. A lot of fires would break out.

Originally posted by winds
reply to post by whiteblack

 

I think an asteroid hitting land would be far worst. A lot of people would die instantly. A lot of fires would break out.

That depends on where it hit. If it hit the south pole, there might not be much loss of life, maybe not even many fires. There's not much to burn in Antarctica.

The last impact in Tunguska didn't kill many people, because not many people lived there. Had that same impact occurred in a major city, it would have killed millions.

But an extended winter would be bad for everyone, less sunlight and harder to grow food. That would probably happen no matter where it hit on land. Exactly how severe the problem would be is slightly uncertain.

Here's another simulator that's been passed around before:

www.purdue.edu...



You can input parameters such as: size, density, impact angle, impact velocity, impact zone (water/land), and distance from impact.

An oceanic impact has more long term effects, than a continental impact.
Since the continents are much thicker than oceanic crust,in a continental impact most of the energy is reflected back into space via the ejecta plume, whereas in an oceanic impact most of the energy is absorbed by the earth itself.
The energy is transformed into siesmic waves that are focused around the core and try to erupt out on the opposite side of the earth, forming a magma plume or hot spot.
The resulting magma plume may take some time to work its way to the surface but it eventually will, as it did in the case of the deccan traps, the large igneous province eruption that follwed the chixilub impact.
The resulting eruptions may last for tens of thousands or even millions of years before subsiding.

Also the water vapor released into the atmosphere from an oceanic event would also cause the atmosphere to retain the released heat for a much longer time than would a continental strike.

Also a strike by a comet will always be more devastaing than an asteroid as a comet is moving at a much greater speed than an asteroid, 15kms vs 51 kps(kilometers/second), and the energy released follows the this equation E=1/2mass * Velocity^2, so the additional energy is increased by the square of the difference of the velocitys.

Once an object gets to a certain size or speed it really doesnt matter where it hits it will suck for everyone.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Although the tunguska event left a fair amount of damage it was of insignificant size when compared to a real large scale impact, and if it hit a city dead on it would have killed a large number of people.
But compared to the dino killer it was nothing. The chixilub impact incinerated everything, thats is everything, on the north american continent, and heated almost the entire atmosphere to around 400 deg F.