Climatic Effects of giant Asteroid Impact

[fredinno]

Why?

But at least we have a bit of an idea what the asteroid impact would do. Basically Ceres-sized, as shown in the video below.

 

 

A side note, how would you get Mars to collide with Earth?

I heard that magnetic forces from the Sun during its Red Giant Phase would cause the orbits of the inner planets to destabilize... or something along the lines of that. Though Earth would long be uninhabitable by then.

 

I'm trying to recreate the planetary collision in

Spoiler

 

 

and reasonably accurately simulate the results to Earth and its life.

 

 

Because we as Kerbalnauts, THINK BIG.

[YNM]

It's not the magnetic field - simply it's the Sun's atmosphere, slowing things down by drag, much like in LEO today.

Most likely Earth will be devoured in while Mars be the next Mercury.

 

Regarding impacts, I thought we already have a program for that online ?

Edited December 11, 2016 by YNM

[fredinno]

10 minutes ago, YNM said:

It's not the magnetic field - simply it's the Sun's atmosphere, slowing things down by drag, much like in LEO today.

Most likely Earth will be devoured in while Mars be the next Mercury.

 

Regarding impacts, I thought we already have a program for that online ?

It doesn't actually seem to have climatic impacts in its simulation- which is what I'm most interested in.

Would a collision with a Ceres-size object from the Asteroid Belt or Mars Sized object from Mars' Orbit (or even Mercury) release enough water vapor and CO2 to turn Earth into Venus?

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/06/11/study-earth-may-collide-with-another-planet.html

According to this, apparently Jupiter might (1% chance over next few billion years) destabilize Mercury to fling it into the Sun or out of the Solar System.

Under this situation, the orbits of the inner planets could be destabilized.

Quote

in nearly 200 of the cases, two celestial bodies will collide — 48 of which involve Earth.

In other words, it doesn't seem to be dependent on Red Giants at all, just sheer bad luck and some time...

 

I would be looking for a collision of Mars with Earth in a simple transfer orbit (or slightly sub-transfer orbit speed) to simplify things.

What would be the effects?

I did it in the linked simulation, BUT since such a transfer orbit is ~1000 m/s relative to Earth orbital Velocity (according to Delta-V Maps) that's way below the minimum speed in the simulation...

The worst it does, suprisingly, is bursting people's Eardrums, and utterly destroying civilization. Not enough power.

If you're interested in the simulation, look here:https://postimg.org/image/hxnfclsdj/

 

Now, Mercury with Earth:

The Speed of escape velocity from Mercury to Solar ejection (by Jupiter) is ~20km/s.

I imputted that into the sim, and got much more devastating effects, including a Melt pool covering 4.69 (!) % of the Earth.

The seismic data is unavailable, along with airburst and the such, but I would assume it would bee instantly lethal, at least according to the video, since those two scenarios seem to have similar approximate energy and impact.

 

Would the formation of such a giant supervolcano (I used a depth of 3000 km in the ocean) cause runaway global warming?

What about the same situation, but on land (presumably lowering evaporation of water into vapor, which causes more warming)?

[YNM]

31 minutes ago, fredinno said:

It doesn't actually seem to have climatic impacts in its simulation- which is what I'm most interested in.

Specific climate is horrendous to predict. (one example)

Also, fox as a science source ? Cited article, abstract for that news.

Works from him might answer your questions. More paper.

Edited December 11, 2016 by YNM

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Specific climate is horrendous to predict. (one example)

Also, fox as a science source ? Cited article, abstract for that news.

Works from him might answer your questions. More paper.

I used Fox because it was the Link from Wikipedia... XD

Wikipedia is not always a good source.

 

I was looking more general effects. Like Global Warming level stuff.

Also, your abstract is the wrong source

[p1t1o]

Collide Mars with Earth? And its effects on life?

Disregarding, for the moment, the cataclysmic amount of kinetic energy one would have to manipulate to make this happen, I would wager that even if you were to *gently rest* mars on the Earth, the ensuing "smooshing together" that would follow would likely end all civilisation at least, if it did not sterilise the entire surface. And a multi-km/s impact? Fuggeddaboutit!

Any "climate" left over after that would be the least of ones problems! Though I imagine it would be "somewhat dynamic" - Im not sure if there is enough energy involved here to melt the entire crust, but thats the ballpark.

***edit***

Quick back-of-the-napkin:

From project rho:

6.6 × 10²⁶ J, 158 Pt: Energy required to heat all the oceans of Terra to boiling

3.2 × 10²⁶ J, 77 Pt: Energy required blow off Terra's atmosphere into space

7.0 × 10²⁷ J, 2 Et: Energy required to vaporize all the oceans of Terra and dehydrate the crust

2.9 × 10²⁸ J, 7 Et: Energy required to melt the (dry) crust of Terra

2.1 × 10²⁹ J, 50 Et: Earth's rotational energy

1.5 × 10³⁰ J, 359 Et: Energy required blow off Terra's crust into space

Kinetic Energy of Mars @ 1km/s relative - 3.195e29J

All the energy won't get released into the crust, but then it will probably be going a little quicker than 1km/s just by falling into Earth's gravity well.

 

Edited December 12, 2016 by p1t1o

[Green Baron]

There's a simulation somewhere of the Theia/Earth collision, the event that formed the moon. The bodies are literally reconfigured. Climate ? Nope ... :-)

Collisions with objects of several 100km diameter ("Ceres sized") belong to the times when earth was forming. Today such an event would probably delete bio-, cryo-, hydro- and atmosphere. I don't think anyone (except discovery channel :-)) really calculated through it, based on current knowledge, but just have in mind that the skin on geology is terribly thin. Part of the atmosphere could be lost into space. That'll be a bad day for life :-)

Maybe some bacteria could have a chance to celebrate a second birthday ...

[Codraroll]

I don't think global warming would be your first problem. Enough stuff would be kicked into the atmosphere to dim sunlight over a region - or globally - for a really long time (the dust from the WTC collapses took a year to settle, for instance). The dust would reflect more sunlight than the atmosphere normally does, and less energy would reach the ground. You would get global cooling instead (also known as a nuclear winter). Perhaps the impact would change the chemical composistion of the atmosphere somewhat, but it would take many years before those changes become more noticeable than the ones brought on by the dust.

[Steel]

On 11/12/2016 at 3:29 AM, fredinno said:

Why?

[PICTURE]

But at least we have a bit of an idea what the asteroid impact would do. Basically Ceres-sized, as shown in the video below.

[VIDEO]

 

A side note, how would you get Mars to collide with Earth?

I heard that magnetic forces from the Sun during its Red Giant Phase would cause the orbits of the inner planets to destabilize... or something along the lines of that. Though Earth would long be uninhabitable by then.

 

I'm trying to recreate the planetary collision in

[VIDEO]

and reasonably accurately simulate the results to Earth and its life.

 

 

Because we as Kerbalnauts, THINK BIG.

As others above have alluded to, it's going to be completely catastrophic to pretty much all life. The numerical answers depends entirely on how big the thing is and how fast it's traveling at impact.

Edited December 12, 2016 by Steel

[MinimalMinmus]

Yup, given an impact that big, you could skip the "Will X get destroyed?" and say "Yep". The asteroid of this video, despite being very round, isn't Ceres, but rather Vesta-sized (or if you prefer, Minmus-sized). Ceres, in the same throw, would pack roughtly 8 times more kinetic energy than this already ginormous impact. Later in the discovery channel video, they explain how Vesta wouldn't cook the bedrock fast enough to prevent the eventual cooling as the "heat wave" is advancing, killing everything in it's way (It still advances about halfway through the "still-habitable crust" before cooling). I would assume Ceres would have no problem with that, essentially ending all life on Earth. As of Mars... well, there is no question here. No more life, period.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, p1t1o said:

6.6 × 10²⁶ J, 158 Pt: Energy required to heat all the oceans of Terra to boiling

3.2 × 10²⁶ J, 77 Pt: Energy required blow off Terra's atmosphere into space

7.0 × 10²⁷ J, 2 Et: Energy required to vaporize all the oceans of Terra and dehydrate the crust

2.9 × 10²⁸ J, 7 Et: Energy required to melt the (dry) crust of Terra

2.1 × 10²⁹ J, 50 Et: Earth's rotational energy

1.5 × 10³⁰ J, 359 Et: Energy required blow off Terra's crust into space

I did this many times in Spore! (By money cheating, of course)

 

If Mars hits Earth, climate gets warmer. For several thousand Kelvins or so.
Then we get a new planet. New we.

Edited December 12, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Gianni1122]

We would not survive a collision with Mars. If, however, you drastically scale down the size of your theoretical impactor, your question becomes a lot more interesting and I can even answer it for you. 

THE ANSWER......to your climate question-when scaled down-is very easy to come by. Just ask the dinosaurs and their 10km friend, "Chicxulub"... To put it simply, an impact event similar in magnitude to the one that killed many of the aforementioned scaly and or feathery former Earthlings, would be detrimental to the climate. It might not ever be the same, but would recover just like it has done in the past. Humans would also have a better survival rate than the dinos did. 

EFFECTS? The initial shock waves would trigger global volcanic eruptions. The debris that is ejected out of the atmosphere by the impact is dispersed further around the planet do to its trajectory as well as the earths rotation. If said debris generates enough thermal radiation during its reentry, it could ignite wildfires over wide spread areas of the globe (not to mention the fires caused by the volcanoes and occurring near the impact site itself).  Wildfire and volcanoes are not great for the atmosphere to begin with, but on a global scale? No bene!

As time goes on, it only gets worse...

Eventually the smoke and debris/dust particles in the atmosphere could end up blocking sunlight from reaching earths surface (which is completely covered with fallen soot and ash btw). Earths temp falls drastically (impact winter). The few plants remaining, can't breathe. The food chain is disrupted. Yada yada yada. Other side effects may include but, are not limited to, earthquakes, megatsunamis, acid rain, poor phone reception, a change in earths orbit and/or tilt, evolution, pseudoextinction, mass extinction or loss of consciousness. Results may vary 

Keep in mind, the asteroid or comet that (allegedly) "wiped-out" the dinosaurs was estimated to be 10km in diameter. Ceres is almost 1000k and an impact would essentially be like hitting the reset button on the entire evolution of the planet earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[p1t1o]

Some fresh data on the subject (concerning rocks in the ~250m class I think):

http://www.lanl.gov/newsroom/picture-of-the-week/pic-week-44.php

The takeaway is - that an ocean impact would not necessarily result in ginormous waves that scour coastlines across the globe, but will create a colossal amount of water vapour.

[todofwar]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Some fresh data on the subject (concerning rocks in the ~250m class I think):

http://www.lanl.gov/newsroom/picture-of-the-week/pic-week-44.php

The takeaway is - that an ocean impact would not necessarily result in ginormous waves that scour coastlines across the globe, but will create a colossal amount of water vapour.

Since water vapor can actually be thought of as a greenhouse gas itself, I wonder if throwing enough into the atmosphere could ever trigger some kind of feedback loop involving all the trapped methane in permafrost, Venusifying the Earth. Or would the dust override any extra warming from the water vapor.

[78stonewobble]

A little curious, considering average collision speed (whatever that is), how massive an object does it take to create a global magma surface? It seemed like... on the video, that the impactor there, Ceres sized (?) wasn't quite big enough to do that.

[Green Baron]

Relative velocities for solar system bodies crossing earths orbit are between 8 and max. 70km/s. The average is around 17km/s. This takes into account for earths speed around the sun of 30km/s. I got that from NASAs NEO and impact risc pages. It seems logical to me, the lower limit could be an object on a similar orbit and the upper limit one from the Oort cloud.

I am not sure about the videos scientific significance. It might well be that the result of a collision mars sized and above creates a new asteroid belt with a few major objects. Earth "survived" the Theia collision just barely ....

Edited December 15, 2016 by Green Baron

[p1t1o]

10 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

A little curious, considering average collision speed (whatever that is), how massive an object does it take to create a global magma surface? It seemed like... on the video, that the impactor there, Ceres sized (?) wasn't quite big enough to do that.

High-energy kinetic impacts like to deposit their energy quite rapidly, more energy means a larger explosion in most cases, rather than deeper penetration. We think of faster=deeper mainly becaues we normally work at much lower energies where atomic bonding is still the major limiting factor.

Newtons approximation for impact depth is often a pretty good place to start when considering high-energy (ie: atomic bonding no longer the dominant force) impacts.

This would suggest that an asteroid with a similar density to crust-material, would need to have a diameter similar to the thickness of the crust at impact in order to fully penetrate (note: this ignores the atmosphere). This will be largely independent of speed (since it will be, at minimum, travelling a few km/s - it makes little difference to penetration depth if it is 5km/s or 50km/s, this just affects how much bang you get at the surface where most of the energy is released).

Fun Fact: I have heard that, when considering high-velocity objects penetrating the atmosphere, one can approximate it as equivalent to roughly 6 feet of steel or 10 metres of water. Following Newtons approximation, this would indicate that a rock needs a minimum diameter of roughly 2-5 meters in order to reach the ground. Given that it is an approximation, and that it refers to an impact at perpendicular to the Earths surface, this matches reality fairly closely. The Chelyabinck meteor, for example, was 17-20 metres across, but entered at a much shallower angle (so it sees a thicker section of the atmosphere) and penetrated down to 25km. Had it entered at 90degrees it may have stood a chance at striking the surface.

 

Note that smaller rocks can reach the earths surface because they are slowed down high up in the atmosphere and fall the rest of the way ballistically. Technically, their "penetration depth" ended when their incoming kinetic energy was expended, so though they reach the surface by falling, they are not an anomaly to the above approximation.

 

12 hours ago, todofwar said:

Since water vapor can actually be thought of as a greenhouse gas itself, I wonder if throwing enough into the atmosphere could ever trigger some kind of feedback loop involving all the trapped methane in permafrost, Venusifying the Earth. Or would the dust override any extra warming from the water vapor.

I think you'd need more supercomputer time to figure that one out  Im sure its a possibility.

[Green Baron]

Besides dust particles in the atmosphere from an impact small enough so that the atmosphere is still intact, water vapor aka clouds reflect the sunlight. They either reflect it back to the surface, trapping the energy in the lower atmosphere or back into space, depending on thickness and cover.

An earth wide cloud cover would on a short term actually lead to abrupt cooling (increase earths albedo), less energy reaches the surface but is reflected on the upper side of the cloud cover back into space. The resulting cooling of the surface can lead to snow cover on land when the water vapor condensates (snows), thus increasing the albedo even more. If enough of the surface is covered by snow the energy of the sun will not suffice to melt it, the snow covered surface will reflect too much energy back into space. The then clear atmosphere will amplify this effect. It would need a dark dustcover on the snow to free the earth from that state.

More info: "nuclear winter" as a preliminary phase of this scenario or "snowball earth" hypothesis as a stable climatic state.

:-)