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Post by hummingbirdstones on Aug 15, 2023 11:37:51 GMT -5
Crashing Into That Asteroid Didn’t Go As Planned (BrightPress.org) – NASA’s attempt to divert an asteroid resulted in the release of a swarm of boulders from the target, each with the potential energy of an atomic bomb. Thankfully, the target asteroid was not careening toward Earth but was part of a test to determine NASA’s capability to knock potential threats to the planet off course. In September 2022, scientists aimed a spacecraft at Dimorphos, an asteroid that poses no threat to Earth, and crashed into it in order to measure the result in the first-ever attempt to divert an asteroid in our solar system. While the experiment was successful in altering the course of the asteroid, it also released 37 boulders from the target which now share the same speed as their progenitor, roughly 13,000 miles per hour. The experiment showed that should something like this be attempted in the future, one of the potential risks is the creation of more falling objects. UCLA professor David Jewitt compared the expanding cloud of debris to shrapnel from a hand grenade. He also said that since the offspring have the same speed as their parent, they present their own individual threats should they collide with Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope spotted the debris cloud and researchers estimated that the boulders range from 3 to 22 feet in diameter. Jewitt said that a 15 ft boulder hitting Earth at the speed they’re traveling at would release similar amounts of energy as the Hiroshima bomb. Pictures from Hubble and the experimental craft that collided with the asteroid showed that the boulders were not parts of the asteroid ejected, but rather boulders that were bundled on the surface. Scientists suggested that when they crashed the craft into the asteroid it shook the surface and caused the fragments to slowly spread from the main body. Dimorphos orbits another asteroid called Didymos, Dimorphos is roughly the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza whereas Didymos is the size of a mountain. The binary asteroid system comes around 6 million miles from Earth during its closest pass, which is why it was chosen for the experiment. Copyright 2023, BrightPress.org brightpress.org/crashing-into-that-asteroid-didnt-go-as-planned/Also see: www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-asteroid-blunder-unleashes-boulder-160735199.htmlDuh! |
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Post by HankRocks on Aug 15, 2023 11:55:59 GMT -5
The pieces are still too large to fit in my 24 inch saw or my tumbler!!
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Post by vegasjames on Aug 15, 2023 20:24:29 GMT -5
The smaller pieces can sill collide with other objects in space, and even if they did enter Earth's atmosphere, they would likely burn up most if not all the way unless they come in real steep. Even with that, most the Earth is covered by water and therefore low odds of hitting any populated areas causing significant damage.
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Aug 15, 2023 23:04:21 GMT -5
The smaller pieces can sill collide with other objects in space, and even if they did enter Earth's atmosphere, they would likely burn up most if not all the way unless they come in real steep. Even with that, most the Earth is covered by water and therefore low odds of hitting any populated areas causing significant damage. Didn't the meteor that supposedly killed off the dinosaurs crash into the water? |
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Post by perkins17 on Aug 15, 2023 23:36:33 GMT -5
Armageddon anyone?  looks like we're screwed whether Nasa happens to notice OR overlook certain unfriendly space rocks. |
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Post by vegasjames on Aug 16, 2023 1:36:57 GMT -5
The smaller pieces can sill collide with other objects in space, and even if they did enter Earth's atmosphere, they would likely burn up most if not all the way unless they come in real steep. Even with that, most the Earth is covered by water and therefore low odds of hitting any populated areas causing significant damage. Didn't the meteor that supposedly killed off the dinosaurs crash into the water? You are referring to the Chicxulub crater. Several points to be made here though.
First of all, there is no solid evidence that this event wiped out the dinosaurs. There is still a lot of debate over this. For instance, I have heard there was an estimated 10,000 year difference between the impact time and the extinction of the dinosaurs.
And if the hypothesis is correct, and light was blocked out for thousands of years, then the food chain would have collapsed and all life would have ceased to exist. Yet, animals such as sharks, turtles, some reptiles, etc. all survived past the event.
The meteor that caused the Chicxulub crater was estimated to between 6 miles to over 10 miles wide, and it penetrated over mile deep in to the Earth. Therefore, the meteor was too large to burn up, nor reduce in size significantly. We are not talking about boulder size pieces as were created by the probe impact.
The angle of entry is also important. In the case of Chicxulub, the angle of entry appears to have been pretty steep creating more of an impact. Meteors that enter the atmosphere at a shallow angle have more time to burn up, lose a lot more force due to frictional drag, and can even "bounce" back out of our atmosphere back in to space.
Most meteors enter shallow, which is why they rarely make a significant impact. When they first hit Earth's atmosphere, they are traveling at 10.000 to 30,000 miles per hour, which is why there is such intense frictional heating that the bolide (plasma) is formed around the nose of the meteor. Our atmosphere also creates friction slowing them down. Most often meteors will slow the point they no longer have the energy to move forward and the plop to the ground instead of impacting like a projectile. Another way to look at this principle is when the old Apollo capsules would come in, it was also at a speed that created enough frictional heating to create a plasma underneath. If they tried to deploy the parachutes at that time to slow down the parachutes would be destroyed in a millisecond. They had to wait until the capsule slowed down sufficiently from atmospheric resistance to deploy the parachutes to slow down further for a safe splashdown.
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Aug 16, 2023 11:17:58 GMT -5
Didn't the meteor that supposedly killed off the dinosaurs crash into the water? You are referring to the Chicxulub crater. Several points to be made here though.
First of all, there is no solid evidence that this event wiped out the dinosaurs. There is still a lot of debate over this. For instance, I have heard there was an estimated 10,000 year difference between the impact time and the extinction of the dinosaurs.
And if the hypothesis is correct, and light was blocked out for thousands of years, then the food chain would have collapsed and all life would have ceased to exist. Yet, animals such as sharks, turtles, some reptiles, etc. all survived past the event.
The meteor that caused the Chicxulub crater was estimated to between 6 miles to over 10 miles wide, and it penetrated over mile deep in to the Earth. Therefore, the meteor was too large to burn up, nor reduce in size significantly. We are not talking about boulder size pieces as were created by the probe impact.
The angle of entry is also important. In the case of Chicxulub, the angle of entry appears to have been pretty steep creating more of an impact. Meteors that enter the atmosphere at a shallow angle have more time to burn up, lose a lot more force due to frictional drag, and can even "bounce" back out of our atmosphere back in to space.
Most meteors enter shallow, which is why they rarely make a significant impact. When they first hit Earth's atmosphere, they are traveling at 10.000 to 30,000 miles per hour, which is why there is such intense frictional heating that the bolide (plasma) is formed around the nose of the meteor. Our atmosphere also creates friction slowing them down. Most often meteors will slow the point they no longer have the energy to move forward and the plop to the ground instead of impacting like a projectile. Another way to look at this principle is when the old Apollo capsules would come in, it was also at a speed that created enough frictional heating to create a plasma underneath. If they tried to deploy the parachutes at that time to slow down the parachutes would be destroyed in a millisecond. They had to wait until the capsule slowed down sufficiently from atmospheric resistance to deploy the parachutes to slow down further for a safe splashdown.
That's why I said "supposedly" about killing the dinos.  I'm on that fence with that theory. |
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gemfeller
Cave Dweller 
Member since June 2011
Posts: 4,067 
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Post by gemfeller on Aug 16, 2023 13:18:13 GMT -5
Looks like we have a choice between a nuclear bomb and a cluster bomb.
Seriously, I'm all for research and further experimentation to learn if we can "nudge" an incoming space object into a new orbit that doesn't threaten Earth. We learned from this experiment and can now focus on possible ways to avoid such fragmentation.
Chances are we'll never face such a threat in our lifetimes. But an object with colossal damage potential luckily slipped just past us between the orbits of the Moon and Earth just a week or so ago. It could have made for a Very Bad Day .
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Post by jasoninsd on Aug 16, 2023 15:20:34 GMT -5
Is this the one where Bruce Willis sacrificed his life for Ben Affleck? That was a good movie!!  |
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Aug 16, 2023 19:32:13 GMT -5
Is this the one where Bruce Willis sacrificed his life for Ben Affleck? That was a good movie!! Oh yes indeed! One of my favorites. Plus as a bonus, Steve Buscemi in his iconic role as Rockhound.  |
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Post by 1dave on Aug 24, 2023 8:06:52 GMT -5
Impact Science is still taking baby steps. By the 1770s, chemistry began to play a pivotal role in the theoretical foundation of geology and two opposite theories (clashing Belief Systems!) with committed followers emerged. The first theory suggested that a liquid inundation, perhaps like the biblical deluge, had created all geological strata. Abraham Werner's views become internationally influential around 1800. He argued that the earth's layers, including basalt and granite, had formed as a precipitate from an ocean that covered the entire earth. Werner's system was influential and those who accepted his theory were known as Diluvianists or Neptunists. The second theory developed during the 1780's, by Scotsman, James Hutton (1726–1797), a Scottish farmer and naturalist, who was a great observer of the world around him, and is considered to be the father of modern geology. He theorized that instead of water, strata was formed by heat. His followers, known as “Plutonists” believed that volcanic processes were the chief agent in rock formation, not water from a Great Flood. This led him to the conclusion that the earth was immeasurably old and could not possibly be explained within the chronology of the Bible. In early nineteenth-century Britain, catastrophism was adapted with the aim of reconciling geological science with religious traditions of the biblical Great Flood. Charles Lyell challenged catastrophism with the publication in 1830 of the first volume of his book Principles of Geology which presented a variety of geological evidence from England, France, Italy and Spain to prove Hutton's ideas of gradualism correct. He argued that most geological change had been very gradual in human history. Lyell provided evidence for Uniformitarianism, a Geological
Doctrine holding that processes occur at the same rates in the present as they did in the past and account for all of the earth's geological features. Lyell's works were popular and widely accepted. When I started studying geology in 1955 there were NO impact craters on earth.
Continents did not move around.It is hard to see what you don't believe. |
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Post by HankRocks on Aug 24, 2023 14:48:25 GMT -5
1dave I am currently reading "The Map that Changed the World" by Simon Winchester (IMHO an excellent Author). It's the story of the Englishman William Smith, a canal digger who created the first Geologic Map which he published in 1815. In 1793 he made the discovery that certain fossils were only found in certain layers and that the layers were different and even though they dipped and sloped but could still be traced by the fossils contained. He spent 20 plus years traveling England and collecting samples confirming and mapping exposures of the different layers. He was fortunate that he did this work in a period where traditional beliefs and established science was being questioned as you mentioned in the previous post. The Author also wrote "Krakatoa- The day the World Exploded", an excellent look at the explosion of the Krakatoa Volcano. Henry
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Post by 1dave on Aug 24, 2023 15:03:41 GMT -5
1dave I am currently reading "The Map that Changed the World" by Simon Winchester (IMHO an excellent Author). It's the story of the Englishman William Smith, a canal digger who created the first Geologic Map which he published in 1815. In 1793 he made the discovery that certain fossils were only found in certain layers and that the layers were different and even though they dipped and sloped but could still be traced by the fossils contained. He spent 20 plus years traveling England and collecting samples confirming and mapping exposures of the different layers. He was fortunate that he did this work in a period where traditional beliefs and established science was being questioned as you mentioned in the previous post. The Author also wrote "Krakatoa- The day the World Exploded", an excellent look at the explosion of the Krakatoa Volcano. Henry Those are both great books! William Smith really began it all! |
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looks like we're screwed whether Nasa happens to notice OR overlook certain unfriendly space rocks.
I'm on that fence with that theory.
... to the New Guys from The ChatBox V.2 Crew