Slashdot Mirror
Vast Asteroid Crater Found In Timor Sea
An anonymous reader notes the discovery of a 35-million-year-old impact crater in the Timor Sea, northwest of Australia, which helped to usher in a period of significant global cooling. "The new findings, announced today and published in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, suggest that the impact could have contributed towards the formation of the Antarctic ice sheet... The minimum size of the dome, which 'represents elastic rebound doming of the Earth crust triggered by the impact' is 50 km across, but the full size of the crater could be significantly larger, [lead researcher Andrew Glikson] told Australian Geographic. 'It would be possibly 100 km.' From the probable diameter of the crater, Andrew estimates that the asteroid which struck the Timor Sea was between 5 and 10 km in size. This impact coincided with a time of heavy asteroid bombardment globally. Several other craters have been documented from a similar time, including one off the WA coast measuring 120 km in diameter. Another impact structure in Siberia was created by an asteroid 100 km in size."
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
I am officially gone from
Something that large hitting the earth would evaporate most of the oceans and turn a large proportion of the earths surface molten. If it didn't kill off life entirely it would certainly kill off almost all multicellular organisms and reset the evolutionary clock so an impact like that could not have happened in the last 600 million years at least.
"Andrew estimates that the asteroid which struck the Timor Sea was between 5 and 10 km" The crater left was up to 100km in diameter.
Read the article. The crater is 10x the size of the rock.
Reading is fundamental....
The minimum size of the dome, which 'represents elastic rebound doming of the Earth crust triggered by the impact' is 50 km across, but the full size of the crater could be significantly larger, [lead researcher Andrew Glikson] told Australian Geographic. 'It would be possibly 100 km.'
Andrew estimates that the asteroid which struck the Timor Sea was between 5 and 10 km in size.
And the probability for all future events is 50/50.. they either will happen or they won't :)
FTFS: "Another impact structure in Siberia was created by an asteroid 100 km in size."
From what I could quickly find, the Popigai Crater in Siberia is 100km in diameter, but that doesn't mean that whatever created it was 100km in size.
This guy's the limit!
I think they are off by an order of magnitude there.
Best Slashdot Co
So how long before dropping a rock in the ocean is offered as a technological solution to Global Warming ?
Who in their right mind accepts a kdawson summary at face value?
But not once we measure them. So we only find the 100% probability ones. The others have dead cats in them ;-p
Not it wouldn't. It would be bad, but not likely to kill off almost all multicellular organisms.
And evolution isn't a clock.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm not sure any of you fully understand probability.
it's under construction
Probably not.
AT&ROFLMAO
There's another huge impact crater around Chicxulub, Mexico.
180km in diameter. Terrifying stuff, it makes a nuclear explosion look like a wet firework.
Let's hope we're ready for the next rock that comes our way. It's only a matter of time.
ahh the benefits of deep sea oil drilling and exploration!!! what could go wrong?
There are easy (rough approximations of) conversions between three metrics -- miles to kilometers, yards to meters, and quarts to liters. A liter is just over a quart, so four liters is just over a gallon. A yard is just short of a meter, so a meter is approximately one yard (three feet). A kilometer is .6 mile, so with a rough number like "aproximately 100 km" it's easy to figure it's about sixty miles. No need to print both metrics with these easy ones.
We Americans think in imperial while the rest of the world thinks in metric, so it makes sense to give both measurements for the other units of measurement anywhere Americans and the rest of the world will be reading; rather than having thousands of people laboriously convert harder conversions, just do it once and publish that. Because the other ones aren't so easy e.g., -- inches to CM, degrees C to degrees F, soccor to football, or humor to humour.
Free Martian Whores!
The last sentence of that summary has _got_ to be a wording mistake. The impact CRATER in Siberia is 100km across. The impactor was (I just looked it up), "either an eight-kilometer diameter chrondrite asteroid, or a five-kilometer diameter stony asteroid." Indeed, an asteroid 100km across hitting the surface would leave something just a tad bit more noticeable than anything we've got so far, heh. And yes it would do really bad things to life on the planet; you're right on that count.
I like basketball!!1!
Perhaps you'd prefer lengths in Smoots, or cubits? But seriously, you're free to continue using 19th Centrury units if you want, just don't expect everyone else to put effort into enabling you.
Actually .. I use 18th century units like km, m, cm and mm
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Evolution is not a clock.
It's a series of screws.
The enemies of Democracy are
a 100km dense rock asteroid would sterilize the earth's surface. It would vaporize 343000 cubic miles of crust in less than a second.
Peak Overpressure: 6.89e+07 Pa = 689 bars = 9780 psi at 500km from impact. Actually at 500km from impact you'd be in the crater since it would be 520 miles in size. If it were possible to not be incinerated instantly, the pressure would probably cause you to explode as it dissipated. The wind would be 14900 mph
At 5000km from impact, you'd get hit with wind doing 978mph and get subjected to 54psi air pressure 4 hours after impact. This would kill you. Your body would be buried under 5.1 feet of ejecta
This is assuming a "Dense Rock" asteroid hitting the earth at a 45 degree angle, at 17000kph, which is the typical impact velocity. 11.8 RS earthquake would result over the entire earth. This is off the scale. It's nearly a quadrillion tons of seismic energy. It would split the earth. You would be launched high enough into the air to kill you from the impact when you came back down, if the acceleration didn't kill you. A nickel/iron one would be much worse.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=500&distanceUnits=1&diam=100&diameterUnits=2&pdens=&pdens_select=3000&vel=17&velocityUnits=1&theta=45&wdepth=&wdepthUnits=1&tdens=2500
The earth would most likely be an asteroid belt right now from this size of an impact at 45 degrees. It would survive an oblique impact, but the earth would get another moon and it would be an extinction event. The orbit would certainly be affected and the tides would change.
Yea it would be very messy and kill just about all multicellular animals. People would become extinct. There would be nowhere to hide on the earth's surface.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
I already checked it....there's nothing to see, really; no outline of the crater is visible. If you really want to check it out though, the cords are Lat: 2117'50.00"N and Long: 8935'40.00"W
Loading...
And the Lords of the Underworld!
Darkness fills my heart with pain!
When the girls start to sleep with girls,
Beelzebub will rise again!
Bow-ties are cool.