A possible impact of a comet with Mars in 2014

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by openminded2011

 

You have to wonder the following: could an impact of THAT magnitude affect the orbit of Mars,

No. It's sort of like a fly vs. 18 wheeler.

or could we get hit with any large ejecta

That's possible, but it would get to us for a very long time.

I agree it's probably a negligible risk but that's an awful lot of explosion we are talking about. It's a little more wallop than the fly truck analogy. And Mars is floating in space not connected to a road. It will have some affect on the orbit, maybe it will move Mars a foot closer to the sun, but I am willing to bet it will move the planet somewhat.

reply to post by openminded2011

It will have some affect on the orbit, maybe it will move Mars a foot closer to the sun, but I am willing to bet it will move the planet somewhat.

One foot isn't much and it wouldn't have any effect on any other planet but maybe doing the math before you make that bet would be a good idea. Here's how to go about it.

In order to move mars closer to the Sun you need to reduce its angular momentum (like firing retrorockets on a satellite). You can calculate the amount of energy needed do this.

You can calculate the amount of kinetic energy applied to Mars by the comet. Of course, a lot of that energy will be expended as heat and lost to space but just for fun assume all of it is used to push Mars backwards enough to reduce its orbit. If the comet does hit Mars, it won't be a head on crash but for the sake of simplifying things, let's assume it is.

i,m bad cause i haven,t read everyones posts but when nasa are saying that its a possibility it could hit when everything thats been coming close to earth they,ve said has no chance then my ears went up.

is this another jupiter? but cause its so close they don,t want to fling it out there incase they cause a panic?mean mars is close and if a comet is only a year away from smashing into it then do they really want to get people thinking where next?we,ve had a few close shaves recently so u never know.

reply to post by sparky31

It will get more people thinking about it, which is good. Like the recent activity, increasing awareness of the possibility may lead to some proactive steps being taken. Though people forgot about Shoemaker-Levy pretty quickly, if Mars is hit it's a lot closer to home and would have a greater effect on politicians.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by sparky31

 

It will get more people thinking about it, which is good. Like the recent activity, increasing awareness of the possibility may lead to some proactive steps being taken. Though people forgot about Shoemaker-Levy pretty quickly, if Mars is hit it's a lot closer to home and would have a greater effect on politicians.

edit on 3/6/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

yeah everyone forgot about shoemaker-levy and am pretty sure everyone will forget about Chelyabinsk just as quick.

its like any news,people remember it when it is news but forget it just as quick so i,m not sure anyone will really care tho they have to remember that if it was shoemaker-levy then we wouldn,t even be talking about this since it left a hole in jupiter the size of the earth.

Will comet Siding Spring make a meteor shower on Mars?
www.planetary.org...

If small dust grains are ejected at a few tens of m/s, it only needs to be ejected a month or two before the closest approach to Mars to travel this distance in the absence of radiation pressure. But accounting for radiation pressure any dust this old will be pushed far down the tail, and since the tail is pointed away from Mars... no meteors. I ran a short 3D simulation that agrees with this assessment. The coma has already evolved into a tail well before it travels 100,000 km.

You were also asking about millimeter-sized grains. These will be ejected with lower velocities, perhaps only a meter per second or less, and would take more than a year to travel 100,000 km from the comet in the absence of radiation pressure. Again, once we consider radiation pressure, and giving it a year to act on the dust, even grains this large will be pushed quite far down the tail.

So, in short, I'm not predicting anything spectacular for Mars, but I hope I'm wrong! If the closest approach distance decreases significantly, then we may have to revisit this experiment with a more careful treatment.

Seems like there no real danger to the rovers if the comet passes by. Or at least I hope so.

It is quite exciting really. We get to see a once in civilization comet fly past in the coming years, we get to see a different comet potentially hit Mars, we have just seen an air meteor explosion in Russia. Good times for those that love all things space related.

Just out of interest, does anyone know how "dead" Mars is geologically? Could such an impact result in vulcanism on Mars itself or is that particularly aspect well gone from Mars? Would be quite interesting to have Curiosity "watching" Olympus Mons if there is any possibility! You would think a 25 mile high volcano could produce some extremely impressive pyroclastic flows.

ETA:

Scratch that question, it seems that Mars is still geologically active (to an extent), as per articles in Nature, NASA, etc.

Originally posted by skuly
reply to post by wildespace

 

Well if there any life on mars before it hits there might not be after.

We won't need to send men to mars bit of it will come to us.
So on the upside think of the money we save on rock collecting
mars missions which might upset arken a bit.

Found this video to give everyone a idea how close it comes to mars.
fastforward to 1min to skip the outer solar system.

Star and flag for the info.

Holy #, if it's going to be THAT close, won't the gravity well of Mars not pull it in..? (are there any calcs for that?)

If it does hit, what effect if any would or could that have in terms of earthbound debris, does anyone have any idea?

Freaky!

Originally posted by whatnext21
To see what would happen if this comet did hit Mars go to:

janus.astro.umd.edu...

I input the estimates provided above and this was returned ~~
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Energy Released: 19 billion MT (MegaTons of TNT)
(Energy needed to Boil Earth's Oceans: 2000 billion MT)

QUAKE!! Magnitude 12.5 (largest recorded Earthquake: 9.5)
Crater Diameter: 659.0 km
Crater Depth: 4.1 km

Collisions this energetic occurred only early in the Solar System's history.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mars rocks have been found on earth as recently as July 2012 when they fell to earth in the Moroccan desert in a hail of Martian meteorites thought to have been ejected from an asteroid strike. Previous to the 2012 meteor showers that rained down, martian rocks or Tissint as they are called happened in 1815, 1865, 1911 and 1962. These rocks have been found in Antarctica and Sahara are valuable anywhere from $8,500 to $28,350 per ounce. LINK

Do any of those dates correspond in any way with any known impacts of mars by anything?

reply to post by NewAgeMan

Holy #, if it's going to be THAT close, won't the gravity well of Mars not pull it in..? (are there any calcs for that?)

Yes, there are calcs. The same calcs that are used to predict the orbit. Mars is included in those calcs.

reply to post by Phage

If something like that were to hit earth (God forbid) would it be an ELE Phage?

And do we have enough sky covered annually including what's coming from the sun that we would pick it up in time to mount a mission to steer it off course?

Our landings this year on two large meteors is a good sign that such a project could be mounted and successful, isn't it?

All we'd have to do is land and apply some force to one side enough to alter it's orbital trajectory.

reply to post by Phage


Thank you. Sorry for being dumb, but it's just so darn CLOSE!

reply to post by NewAgeMan

If something like that were to hit earth (God forbid) would it be an ELE Phage?

Quite likely.

And do we have enough sky covered annually including what's coming from the sun that we would pick it up in time to mount a mission to steer it off course.

Comets don't come from the Sun but no, we don't have any way of dealing with any thing like it anyway.

Our landings this year on two large meteors is a good sign that such a project could be mounted and successful, isn't it?

It's a start.

All we'd have to do is land and apply some force to one side enough to stear it from a collision course.

Yeah. Piece of cake.


Hopefully this will be a wake up call that we need to get serious. But I doubt it will be.

reply to post by Phage

It worries me that you're worried about it. Try to stay positive k? You know what they say about the law of attraction..

reply to post by NewAgeMan

I'm not worried about the ones we know about.
And I don't lose any sleep over it.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

Holy #, if it's going to be THAT close, won't the gravity well of Mars not pull it in..? (are there any calcs for that?)

Yes, there are calcs. The same calcs that are used to predict the orbit. Mars is included in those calcs.

Are you sure that what's been calculated isn't just the newtonian relative motion of the two objects?

My theory is that the intersecting trajectory is so very close that Mars' gravity will take care of the rest and suck it in for a direct impact.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

Are you sure that what's been calculated isn't just the newtonian relative motion of the two objects?

As well as Newtonian gravitation. Yes, I'm sure.

My theory is that the intersecting trajectory is so very close that Mars' gravity will take care of the rest and suck it in for a direct impact.

Your theory is incorrect. The comet will be moving far too fast to be "sucked" in.

I will have to be the pooper of the 'Mars will be hit' party you are having here. It will not hit Mars or any of its satellites, it is a fly-by, like the one we had last month, only much closer. Besides, comets are not solid to as much as known about their nature, they are gaseous bodies with ice particles and others. It's not an asteroid hitting ... Jupiter is also a gas planet so naturally when you mix one gas body with a concentrated ball of another gas body (the comet) you get what Jupiter had as a spot when the comet 'hit it' - more like mixed into it,

Does the dark spot still stay? No it's gone, it's like if you make a hole with your arm by punching a cloud of gas, then the hole will soon be filled with the gas with no sign that you ever scattered the gas and made a hole in the cloud.

This would be ice particles and gas hitting a solid body, if it were to even hit Mars.

Point is, it will not hit Mars or its satellites. That makes me think, if a comet were approaching the Earth, would people be able to do anything to stop it or deflect it? I think not, hahaha

reply to post by ImpactoR


A comet's nucleus is actually a solid object, made of rocks and ices (frozen gasses). And it's typically several kilometers in diameter. If it does hit something (Mars, Earth, Jupiter), the energy released is huge. On Earth or Mars it would leave a huge crater, on Jupiter the gaseous atmosphere erases the trace as you said correctly. But comets aren't just puffs of gas and particles.

However, you're most likely right about the comet missing Mars; the most recent update at JPL has moved the nominal close approach distance back to 0.0007 AU.

Are you sure that what's been calculated isn't just the newtonian relative motion of the two objects?

My theory is that the intersecting trajectory is so very close that Mars' gravity will take care of the rest and suck it in for a direct impact.

Accurate calculations of comet and asteroid orbits include the gravitational forces exerted by the eight major planets, Pluto, and three of the largest and most significant asteroids in the main belt (1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, and 4 Vesta). So, the gravitational field of Mars has already been taken into account for this close flyby of C/2013 A1. For the record, orbit calculations wouldn't be much use if the gravitational forces of all significant Solar System objects were not taken into account!

Using comet cleanser on Mars. Good marketing scheme.