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New Crater On Moon Caught On Video

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the to-the-moon-alice dept.

From A Far Away Land writes "NASA has released a video clip of a meteorite striking the surface of the Moon. From the article: 'On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon's Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy -- that's about the same as 4 tons of TNT," says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL.'"

3 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sagan's account by canatech · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try this -

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno_(crate r)

  2. Re:Obligatory by kalpaha · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm sorry, but you're wrong! Everyone knows mars bars (278 kilocalories) is the real unit of explosion strength.
    Google does these kind of calculations very easily: enter
    17 billion joules / 278 kilocalories

    into google, and you will receive the answer:
    (17 billion joules) / (278 kilocalories) = 14 615.4587

    So the explosion was ~14615 mars bars.

  3. Re:Do it like they do on the Discovery channel... by NereusRen · · Score: 4, Informative
    Imagine if what hit the moon hit a major city...
    That small of an object (only 10 inches diameter?) would burn up in our atmosphere. It only struck so hard on the moon because there's nothing slowing it down before it hits the surface. I went over to the trusty Asteroid Impact Simulator for a quick comparison. The smallest size you can select is 1 meter in diameter, but here's what it has to say about a fairly average 1m projectile "hitting" earth:

            Energy before atmospheric entry: 2.27 x 10^11 Joules = 0.54 x 10-4 MegaTons TNT [note: the one that hit the moon only had 1.7 x 10^10 Joules of energy... less than one tenth of this hypothetical.]
            The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is less than 1 month.
            The projectile bursts into a cloud of fragments at an altitude of 49200 meters
            No crater is formed, although large fragments may strike the surface.

    We only need to be worried about meteors a few orders of magnitude larger.

    (Hell, TFA even explained that it would burn up, but I guess I can't expect anyone around here to know that...)