Our atmosphere provides little protection against meteors larger than a truck. Others have suggested we use nuclear weapons to “kick” an asteroid from its orbit, or even to shatter it into smaller debris – a rather dim idea that misleads us into believing a single bullet is worse than the blast from a shotgun. A steady pulse of projectile “paintballs” could also do the trick. Some have suggested we strap rocket motors to a threatening rock and nudge it away. In the decades since Enever’s article, writers, scientists, and engineers have proposed various ways to avert such disasters. Although geology was still reluctant to admit to any form of “catastrophism,” eschewing biblical explanations, many read and pondered … seriously. ![]() He was the first to put it all together and publish in a respected and widely available forum. Enever surveyed the available material on meteor and asteroid strikes, then published his own calculations and analysis of what such strikes could do, and have done, to the Earth, with cinematically vivid prose and equally terrifying physics. Enever published his ground-breaking article, “Giant Meteor Impact,” in the periodical Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. Ocean hits are worse than land hits, not just because of immense tidal waves, but because of the vast quantities of super-heated water vapor and dust that spread from the impact to shroud the entire Earth. Scientists believe it was the blast of a 6-mile-wide asteroid off the coast of Mexico some 64 million years ago that changed Earth’s weather for years and hastened the departure of the dinosaurs. Since oceans cover two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, it’s more likely debris will hit water than land. To this day, a steady rain of meteors falls on Earth – some of them left-over pebbles and dust from worn-out comets, others from the “asteroid belt,” still others from big strikes on the Moon and Mars. That impact released the equivalent of 20 megatons of TNT and left a crater 4,000 feet wide.īoth Mars and Earth were long ago hit by planet-sized objects, one spinning off our Moon, the other shaping two distinctly different hemispheres on Mars. As kids we learn about the Barringer Crater in Arizona, a relatively recent formation – 50,000 years old – caused by a rock weighing several times more an aircraft carrier. Life in our solar system has always been dangerous. That’s not an extinction event, but it could easily cause billions of deaths and months, if not years, of climate disruption. If it hit Earth, the impact would unleash a blast the equivalent of over a billion tons of TNT. A tiny collision with another object, way out beyond Mars? What could change between now and 2029, or during any orbit thereafter?Īpophis masses at more than 20 million tons. ![]() Something could happen at any point in Apophis’ orbit to modify its course, just a smidgen. Yet there’s always a possibility we don’t have these measurements exactly right. In 2036, it will probably pass by at a reassuring 14 million miles. In that year, no doubt Apophis will arouse even more attention, because it will be visible in the daytime sky. In 2029, it will swoop in close enough to put some of our orbiting satellites in peril – 20,000 miles. This year, its 1,000-foot bulk approached to within 9 million miles. Named after the evil Egyptian serpent god Apophis, lord of chaos and darkness – and recently dubbed the “doomsday asteroid” – it flies past Earth every seven years.
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