Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014 as big as dinosaur-endin

ScienceChic
Topic Author
Mountain Champion

18 Mar 2013 23:09 #1 by ScienceChic

Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014 as big as dinosaur-endin was created by ScienceChic

Think meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago big. :VeryScared:

Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014
By Phil Plait
Feb. 28, 2013

In case you just can’t get enough impact news, it looks like Mars may actually get hit by a comet in 2014! As it stands right now, the chance of a direct impact are small, but it’s likely Mars will get pelted by the debris associated with the comet.

If the nucleus does hit the planet, well.

That will be amazing, and by “amazing” I mean “apocalyptic”. The nucleus size is not well known, but may be as small as 15 kilometers (9 miles) or as big as 50 km (30 miles). Even using the small number means Mars would be slammed by an unimaginable impact. The comet is orbiting the Sun backward (more on that in a second), so it will be moving at a speed of about 55 kilometers per second (120,000 miles per hour!) upon impact.

A really big one.

Doing a rough calculation, I get an explosive yield of roughly one billion megatons: That’s a million billion tons of TNT exploding. Or, if you prefer, an explosion about 25 million times larger than the largest nuclear weapon ever tested on Earth.

Although it would likely mean the end of the rovers, I'm kinda hoping it happens - that would be incredible to witness!

"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill

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otisptoadwater
Mountain Legend

18 Mar 2013 23:26 #2 by otisptoadwater

Replied by otisptoadwater on topic Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014 as big as dinosaur-endin

Cool! It will be interesting to see how that kind of impact on Mars (assuming it happens) effects the planets closer to the sun.

I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford

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FredHayek
Mountain Legend

19 Mar 2013 05:57 #3 by FredHayek

Replied by FredHayek on topic Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014 as big as dinosaur-endin

Would be cool to see. Think NASA could get an orbital observation platform to the red planet by then?

Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.

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otisptoadwater
Mountain Legend

19 Mar 2013 18:54 #4 by otisptoadwater

Replied by otisptoadwater on topic Mars May Get Hit By a Comet in 2014 as big as dinosaur-endin

FredHayek wrote: Would be cool to see. Think NASA could get an orbital observation platform to the red planet by then?

There may be a lesson to learn from the Martian Defense Force; what if they shoot down the comet well before it impacts the Martian surface? All we need is to catch them in the act and reverse engineer their solution on Earth!

Nifty wikipedia page that covers everything ever sent to Mars, stuff in the cue, and vehicles that didn't quite make it to their destination:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Overview

Lots of stuff on the surface and orbiting the planet, lot's of hardware working as designed and several that served out their design life and then some.

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