crater_of_death_evidence.docx | |
File Size: | 149 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Common Misconceptions
- Meteorites need to be the size of Texas to pose a threat to life forms
- Meteoriteimpactsarerare
- Meteoritesremainburiedundergroundatgroundzero
- Everythinggoesextinctduringamassextinction
- Therehasonlybeenonemassextinction
- Massextinctionshaveonlyonemaincause
What would happen if an comet or asteroid the size of ______________, made of ______________, hit Earth at a velocity of ______________? There are some web apps for that.
Impact Earth Simulates different impact effects where you can set your own parameters for impact and distance from impact The following interactive websites are accurate enough to be used by homeland security and NASA, but user-friendly and visual enough for anyone to calculate the potential damage a comet or asteroid would cause if it hit the Earth.
Enter the websites and start running your own scenarios
Impact Earth Simulates different impact effects where you can set your own parameters for impact and distance from impact The following interactive websites are accurate enough to be used by homeland security and NASA, but user-friendly and visual enough for anyone to calculate the potential damage a comet or asteroid would cause if it hit the Earth.
Enter the websites and start running your own scenarios
- http://www.purdue.edu/IMPACTEARTH
- http://simulator.down2earth.eu/ Creates a crater using Google Earth
- http://www.killerasteroids.org/interactives/impact/index.php
Explore fifty of earth's most obvious asteroid impact sites with satellite images and maps.http://geology.com/meteor-impact-craters.shtml
|
Down 2 Earth
How often have impacts occurred in the past? http://bolid.es/
Do they ever come close? Check out this video clip of an asteroid pass in 2012. Russian asteroid with sonic boom. The camera shakes when hit by the shock wave. Here is more amazing footage of the asteroid. An here is a Chelyabinsk Meteor Shockwave Compilation |
Solar System Collisions
What happens when a comet or an asteroid hits a planet? This calculator created by the Astronomy Workshop at the University of Maryland, gives you the option of wreaking havoc throughout our entire solar system by sending an asteroid or comet hurtling toward your favorite (or least favorite) planet. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Mercury.) After selecting your target, you customize your projectile (composition, diameter and velocity). Next, hit the KABOOM! button (very scientific), and you'll find out what sort of crater you've created and the amount of energy released by the impact. Let 'Er Rip!
Listed below are activities featuring the Solar System Collisions web tool.
Listed below are activities featuring the Solar System Collisions web tool.
Asteroid sizes
Famous Asteroid Impacts
The planet Jupiter actually got smacked by several comet fragments in 1994. You can see the giant black scars left on Jupiter after the impact! This event got scientists thinking more about what would happen if Earth got whacked by a big object.
Here is a very cool but also scary animated infographic showing all the recorded meteorite impacts
Here is a very cool but also scary animated infographic showing all the recorded meteorite impacts
Geologic column
Which explanation does the evidence point to?
If not, here are some ideas as to what really did wipe out the dinosaurs:
- Mass volcanic eruptions in the Deccan Traps in present-day India.
- Land-bridge formation leads to species admixture and spread of disease.
- Deadly ankle-nibbling by rudimentary rodent-like mammals.
- Dinosaur-eating spiders.
- Dinosaurs discover time-travel, journey one billion years into future en masse.
- Murder-suicide.
- Dinosaurs discover faster-than-light space travel, journey one billion light years from Earth en masse.
- Dinosaur economists speculate wildly on fossil fuels, only to discover fossil fuels can’t exist until all dinosaurs die. Ensuing killing spree framed as “necessary to drive economic growth.
- Charismatic hadrosaur cult leader convinces dinosaurs to drink poison Kool-Aid.
- Bad parenting.
- Poor dental hygiene caused by T-Rex’s inability to brush own teeth leads to loss of predation ability and ruinous explosion in herbivore population causing ecosystem collapse.
- Tainted love.
Craters
Wow, there are a lot of near Earth asteroids.
Orbits of “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.” (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
How can we avoid getting hit?
Roids are not all bad. They are metal rich and a source of future mining.
by Newscientist.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.