How much damage would an asteroid cause?
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How much damage would an asteroid cause?
half a cubic mile of the earth, including buildings and people vapourized. hits the ground with an impact of 45,000 Megatons of TNT. someone standing (actually nobody would be standing!) 5 miles away from the impact site would be buried under 1000 feet of ejected material.
How likely is an asteroid to hit Earth?
Asteroids with a 1 km (0.62 mi) diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years on average. Large collisions – with 5 km (3 mi) objects – happen approximately once every twenty million years.
How big was the asteroid that killed dinosaurs?
Folks in the asteroid camp think the impactor was about 6.2 miles (10 km) in diameter. Asteroid or comet fragment, the space rock was big enough to spur one of Earth’s six known mass extinctions.
What would happen if a 20-story asteroid hit the Earth?
An asteroid the size of a 20-story building is bad news. With the right composition, speed, and angle of attack, a rock this size might leave a wake of destruction the size of central Paris. One roughly the size of a football field could obliterate New York, causing a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that might be felt than 1,000 miles away.
What would happen if a house-sized meteorite hit Earth?
A house-sized meteorite can explode in Earth’s atmosphere with a force greater than the nuclear weapon the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Such a space rock could flatten most buildings within 1.5 miles of ground zero. An asteroid the size of a 20-story building is bad news.
How big will the asteroid Bennu’s crater be?
Lindley Johnson, who works as a planetary defense officer at Nasa, said that the size of the crater will be 10 to 20 times the size of the object. Space agency Nasa earlier this week said that an asteroid named Bennu, which is as large as the Empire State Building in New York, could hit the Earth.
How big is the largest asteroid in size?
The largest known asteroid, Ceres, is about the size of Texas. Lucky for us, Ceres has no chance of striking Earth. Watch our full video about how much damage asteroids can do.