When a huge meteorite hits

[apjjm]

Was doing some of my daily youtube browsing and stumbled across this:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wjk-9yJBIG0

It shows how the world would be wiped out if a huge meteorite was to hit, i found it to be very interesting.
If such a meteorite collision was to happen - what would we do, would it wipe out earth entirely, could we prevent it?

 

[arsonistx]

That's pretty interesting. I never thought a meteorite would ever crash on Earth, but I may be wrong. Based on what I saw on that video, I think half of the earth would still be there, but the other half would be completely destroyed.

 

[Dazz]

Cool, that will give me nightmares LOL and would'nt it be ironic if the only person who spotted it would get killed in a car crash on the way to tell someone LOL LOL LOL.

I wonder if they made simulations of all sizes like this ones the size of a pea, car, house, office block, the moon etc etc? I'd be intrested to see the different outcomes.

 

[SykaX]

We'd be dead. Especially the area where it hit (obviously.) I had a problem with the video's representation, though. It showed the meteorite hitting very "slowly." It's not like that in real life. When you see the meteorite with your naked eye, you have, at the very most, about 4.5 seconds to live. That is, assuming you got killed when it hit, not from the violet hot rock burning you to death.

As for the debri, or "Vaporous Rock" cloud, it would destroy the rest of the, umm, I guess I'll call them organisms. The main reason; you can only go without water for 96 hours (I think,) I suppose some water might still be here, but it would eventually turn into acid rain.

Getting rid of it? Hah, slim chance. You know how they blast the rock to pieces in movies? That would pretty much ensure our demise. Instead of one of them hitting us, we get a series of smaller, but still deadly, ones.

The only way I think we might have a chance, is if we strap rockets, or "solar parashoots," or whatever they're called, to it. The rocket, might make the rock implode, though. And the solar parashoot might not gain enough wind energy to change it's course.

 

[unpixelatedgamers]

We'd be (excuse the language) ****ing screwed.

For thousands of Km around the impact site NOTHING would have any chance of survival. On the other side of the planet? Maybe, but only if we retreated deep underground.

But unless sufficient procedures were made for life underground for several hundred years, we'd have no chance. Things would eventually settle down, and its unlikely we'd be around for it.

They used some weird derived units in the video though, cm per minute? That works out to 5m per hour, or 0.8mm per second

 

[agaitu]

it will destroy a vast area
i am not sure about the below text but i remember
somwhere
i read that a metorite has done a good damage to jupiter
i think we can stop its encounter with earth if we correctly spot it we can blast it in the atmosphere itself by using lasers and missiles
but we have to do this before it enters the earths field

 

[SykaX]

it will destroy a vast area
i am not sure about the below text but i remember
somwhere
i read that a metorite has done a good damage to jupiter
i think we can stop its encounter with earth if we correctly spot it we can blast it in the atmosphere itself by using lasers and missiles
but we have to do this before it enters the earths field

What did I just say about missiles/lasers? The force of either of them would take atleast a chunk off of the rock, most likely a lot more, making it unstable. Once it got into the Earth's atmosphere, it would explode and thousands of smaller (but still deadly) pieces of rock would rain down on the Earth. Therefore, killing a much wider area in a shorter anount of time. Okay, so that was a little different explanation than early. But I agree with unpixelatedgamers, we're ****ing screwed.

 

[shaunak]

You can just blast an on comming meteorite with missiles [not even nukes]. The momentum is way too high, plus the fall out will be deadly.

The only chance we have is to redirect their paths, when they are far away from Earth, because a small deviation in deep space would mean millions of miles of deviation near earth.

But unfortuantely......

Usually, we cant spot meteorites unless they are near the sun, and they develop a tail of vapoirized matter. Or they are too close to the earth.
Meteorides beyon Jupiter look just like charcoal lumps, well disguised against the dark background of space.

@ agaitu: The meteorite you speak of was the Shoemaker Levey 9. It is a prime example of the destruction meteorites can bring. If the shoemaker Levey had struck earth, we wouldnt have been here today. But fortunately our heavy neighbour took the blow for us.

This image puts things in perspective http://www.d.smiley1.btinternet.co.uk/jupiterimpact.gif, given that jupiter is a hundred thousand times bigger than us.