Asteroid hit will be catastrophic for India, a report says

[indian_blues]

Guys Chill, roland emmerich can save us, he might have a great plan under himalayas.

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Hmm - let's see - Asteroids are made up of three kinds mostly ice, mostly rock (granite) or mostly metal. The ice kind will burn out in the atmosphere, the other two kind will NOT burn out. Now consider this, a metal asteroid (say Ni-Iron) of 19 kms, weighs 2.830E+10 tonnes, has Melt Energy 8.6 gigatons, Vapourization Energy 51.3 gigatons (equivalent to vapourization of that many tonnes of water, equivalent to ~1% of the world's ocean - guess how much cloud that makes and what will be the size of the Tsunami), Cratering Energy 32.4 megatons which is equivalent to >15,000 Bombs the size dropped on Nagasaki.
So, worldwide mass extinction - easy!
If the blast does not kill you then the tsunami will, if the Tsunami does not kill you, then the floods will. If the flood does not kill you, then the climate change will. Failing all else, the mass extinction of all crop plants (more vulnerable due to monocultures) and domestic animals WILL kill you.
Unless you survive as a cockroach (like "the fly").

What is the chance of it hitting the moon instead of the earth? The earth has natural protection towards all dangers, like elector magnetic radiation, cosmic nuclear radiation, sun storms etc., When a nuclear bomb was tested in space, everyone feared the radiation may drift towards earth but to everyone's surprise it was pulled out wards by the magnetic field of the earth! Life on earth exists because of all these natural protective mechanisms have protected us. Similarly the moon is seen as an asteroid shield against earth, that is the reason the moon as plenty of craters, it acts to limit the percentage of chance of hitting earth as the gravity of moon coupled with it circling earth would draw the asteroid towards itself or by chance hit the moon during its regular orbit around earth?


Also an school kid from Rajastan theorized that the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter where probably remnants of an planet which was destroyed, going by the composure of planets, i recon that the iron and nickel content will not be in any pure form to cause an explosive reaction, it would be coupled with silicon and other impurities which will prevent an explosive reaction with Nickel?

 

[The Messiah]

He forgets to mention that if it happens then dust and ash clouds would cover the whole world for quite some time and block sunlight. Without sunlight all countries will suffer since you can't grow food and temperatures will plummet below freezing.

 

[utubekhiladi]

What is the chance of it hitting the moon instead of the earth? The earth has natural protection towards all dangers, like elector magnetic radiation, cosmic nuclear radiation, sun storms etc., When a nuclear bomb was tested in space, everyone feared the radiation may drift towards earth but to everyone's surprise it was pulled out wards by the magnetic field of the earth! Life on earth exists because of all these natural protective mechanisms have protected us. Similarly the moon is seen as an asteroid shield against earth, that is the reason the moon as plenty of craters, it acts to limit the percentage of chance of hitting earth as the gravity of moon coupled with it circling earth would draw the asteroid towards itself or by chance hit the moon during its regular orbit around earth?


Also an school kid from Rajastan theorized that the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter where probably remnants of an planet which was destroyed, going by the composure of planets, i recon that the iron and nickel content will not be in any pure form to cause an explosive reaction, it would be coupled with silicon and other impurities which will prevent an explosive reaction with Nickel?

the moon and earth both receive equal amount of foreign objects. the reason why we see more craters on moon is because moon has no atmosphere. so no objects impacting moon will burn out. it will be a free fall and direct hit. but most of the objects are vaporized and burnt out when the same objects tries to enter earths atmosphere. but not all of them are burnt in our atmosphere. foreign objects have impacted earth before resulting in incalculable damages. moon is not any shield to protect us from foreign objects.

it has happened in the past and will happen again, click here...
http://images.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1600&bih=799&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=earth+craters&oq=earth+craters&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0

 

[ace009]

What is the chance of it hitting the moon instead of the earth? The earth has natural protection towards all dangers, like elector magnetic radiation, cosmic nuclear radiation, sun storms etc., When a nuclear bomb was tested in space, everyone feared the radiation may drift towards earth but to everyone's surprise it was pulled out wards by the magnetic field of the earth! Life on earth exists because of all these natural protective mechanisms have protected us. Similarly the moon is seen as an asteroid shield against earth, that is the reason the moon as plenty of craters, it acts to limit the percentage of chance of hitting earth as the gravity of moon coupled with it circling earth would draw the asteroid towards itself or by chance hit the moon during its regular orbit around earth?


Also an school kid from Rajastan theorized that the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter where probably remnants of an planet which was destroyed, going by the composure of planets, i recon that the iron and nickel content will not be in any pure form to cause an explosive reaction, it would be coupled with silicon and other impurities which will prevent an explosive reaction with Nickel?

What you talk about is called the "atmosphere" which stops a lot of solar radiation, cosmic radiation, small asteroids and meteroids etc. The Moon as Utubekhiladi correctly points out has no atmosphere, hence is pocked with craters - every hit counts there.
Anyway, the chances of a small asteroid hitting earth is about once in 50,000 years to a very large one hitting earth is once in 50-75 million years. The last "big hit was ~65 million years ago, so we are in the window of that event ...

The moon is a small target with a much lower graviational pull than the earths, so an asteroid being stopped by the moon is very small. It is about as good as you swinging a shoe on a 100 foot wire around you and hoping that anyone thorwing a stone at you will hit the shoe.

Almost all planets have a core primarily made up of iron and some amount of nickel , which will amount to about 80-90% of the planets weight. Asteroids have similar composition as planetsSo the threat of iron/ nickel asteroids is very real.

As for "a rajasthan school boy" - I generally believe in scientists more than school boys for my science, but the fact that the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter is remnants of a planet is old theory that has been discarded. However, many asteroids are indeed made from destroyed planets.

 

[plugwater]

Don't worry guys, Bruce Willis will save our asses!!

 

[Yusuf]

The last moderately big impact, it was rather an air burst of a meteor was in Tunguska in 1908.

More here.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

 

[GPM]

^^^ I'll shift my home to some AFRICAN nation...

Please do. Such catastropes tend follow. Lala. I will stick it out here. So, lets strike a golden mean: It fall in Arabian Sea. You are OK, I am OK.