Effects of an Asteroid Impact on Earth

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Some asteroids have orbits that cross the orbit of the Earth. That means that the Earth will be hit sometime.
Recent studies have shown that the Earth has been hit an alarmingly large number of times in the past. One
large impact is now thought to have contributed to the quick demise of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
What would be the effects of an asteroid hitting the Earth?
Known impact sites on the Earth's continents (from The Planetary and Space Science Centre). See also LPI's
Terrestrial Impact Site for pictures of the craters.
What follows is a condensation of an excellent article by Sydney van den Bergh called "Life and Death in the
Inner Solar System" in the May 1989 issue of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (vol.
101, pages 500-509). He considers a typical impact scenario of a 10-kilometer object with density = 2.5 times
that of water, impacting at a speed of 20 kilometers/second. Its mass = 1.31 trillion tons (1.31 1015 kilograms).
A 1-kilometer object has a mass = 1.31 billion tons.
Explosion
Obviously, something this big hitting the Earth is going to hit with a lot of energy! In the article van den Bergh
uses an old unit of energy of traditional astronomy called an "erg" in which 10 million ergs equals 1 Joule. Since
the energy values in ergs are so tremendously large, let's use the more convenient energy unit of 1 megaton of
TNT (= 4.2 1015 Joules = 4.2 1022 ergs) to describe the energy of the impact. This is the energy one million
tons of dynamite would release if it was exploded and is the energy unit used for nuclear explosions. The largest
yield of a thermonuclear warhead is around 50--100 megatons. The kinetic energy of the falling object is
converted to the explosion when it hits. The 10-kilometer object produces an explosion of 6 107 megatons of
TNT (equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 12.4 on the Richter scale). The 1-kilometer object produces a
milder explosion of "only" 6 104 megatons (equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 9.4 on the Richter
scale).
On its way to the impact, the asteroid pushes aside the air in front of it creating a hole in the atmosphere. The
atmosphere above the impact site is removed for several tens of seconds. Before the surrounding air can rush
back in to fill the gap, material from the impact: vaporized asteroid, crustal material, and ocean water (if it lands
in the ocean), escapes through the hole and follows a ballistic flight back down. Within two minutes after
impact, about 105 cubic kilometers of ejecta (1013 tons) is lofted to about 100 kilometers. If the asteroid hits the
ocean, the surrounding water returning over the the hot crater floor is vaporized (a large enough impact will
break through to the hot lithosphere and maybe the even hotter asthenosphere), sending more water vapor into
the air as well as causing huge steam explosions that greatly compound the effect of the initial impact explosion.
There will be a crater regardless of where it lands. The diameter of the crater in kilometers is = 0.765 (energy
of impact in megatons TNT)(1/3.4). Plugging in the typical impact values, you get a 150-kilometer diameter crater
for the 10-kilometer asteroid and a 20-kilometer diameter crater for the 1-kilometer asteroid. The initial blast
would also produce shifting of the crust along fault lines.
Meteor (Barringer) Crater in northern Arizona (about 1
kilometer across). Select here for a view from the rim.

Chicxulub Crater in Yucatan, Mexico (from the

one that may have killed off the dinosaurs).

Tsunami
The oceans cover about 75% of the Earth's surface, so it is likely the asteroid will hit an ocean. The amount of
water in the ocean is nowhere near large enough to "cushion" the asteroid. The asteroid will push the water
aside and hit the ocean floor to create a large crater. The water pushed aside will form a huge tidal wave, a
tsunami. The tidal wave height in meters =10.9 (distance from impact in kilometers)-0.717 (energy of impact
in megatons TNT)0.495. What this means is that a 10-km asteroid hitting any deep point in the Pacific (the largest
ocean) produces a megatsunami along the entire Pacific Rim.

Some values for the height of the tsunami at different distances from the impact site are given in the following
table. The heights are given for the two typical asteroids, a 10-kilometer and a 1-kilometer asteroid.
Distance (in km)
300
1000
3000
10000

10 km asteroid
1.3 km
540 m
250 m
100 m

1 km asteroid
42 m
18 m
8m
3m

The steam blasts from the water at the crater site rushing back over the hot crater floor will also produce
tsunamis following the initial impact tsunami and crustal shifting as a result of the initial impact would produce
other tsunamis---a complex train of tsunamis would be created from the initial impact (something not usually
shown in disaster movies).
Global Firestorm
The material ejected from the impact through the hole in the atmosphere will re-enter all over the globe and heat
up from the friction with the atmosphere. The chunks of material will be hot enough to produce a lot of infrared
light. The heat from the glowing material will start fires around the globe. Global fires will put about 7 1010
tons of soot into the air. This would "aggravate environmental stresses associated with the ... impact."
Acid Rain
The heat from the shock wave of the entering asteroid and reprocessing of the air close to the impact produces
nitric and nitrous acids over the next few months to one year. The chemical reaction chain is:
a. N2 + O2 > NO (molecular nitrogen combined with molecular oxygen produces nitrogen monoxide)
b. 2NO + O2 > 2NO2 (two nitrogen monoxide molecules combined with one oxygen molecule produces
two nitrogen dioxide molecules)
c. NO2 is converted to nitric and nitrous acids when it is mixed with water.
These are really nasty acids. They will wash out of the air when it rains---a worldwide deluge of acid rain with
damaging effects:

destruction or damage of foliage;

great amounts of weathering of continental rocks;

the upper ocean organisms are killed. These organisms are responsible for locking up carbon dioxide in
their shells (calcium carbonate) that would eventually become limestone. However, the shells will
dissolve in the acid water. That along with the "impact winter" (described below) kills off about 90% of
all marine nanoplankton species. A majority of the free oxygen from photosynthesis on the Earth is
made by nanoplankton.

The ozone layer is destroyed by O3 reacting with NO. The amount of ultraviolet light hitting the surface
increases, killing small organisms and plants (key parts of the food chain). The NO2 causes respiratory
damage in larger animals. Harmful elements like Beryllium, Mercury, Thallium, etc. are let loose.

Temperature Effects
All of the dust in the air from the impact and soot from the fires will block the Sun. For several months you
cannot see your hand in front of your face! The dramatic decrease of sunlight reaching the surface produces a
drastic short-term global reduction in temperature, called impact winter. Plant photosynthesis stops and the food
chain collapses.
The cooling is followed by a much more prolonged period of increased temperature due to a large increase in
the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is increased because of the increase of the carbon dioxide and
water vapor in the air. The carbon dioxide level rises because the plants are burned and most of the plankton are

wiped out. Also, water vapor in the air from the impact stays aloft for awhile. The temperatures are too warm
for comfort for awhile.
In the early 1990s astronomers requested funding for an observing program called Spaceguard to catalog all of
the near-Earth asteroids and short period comets. The international program would take 10 years to create a
comprehensive catalog of all of the hazardous asteroids and comets. The cost for the entire program (building
six special purpose telescopes and operation costs for ten years) would be less than what it costs to make a
popular movie like Deep Impact or Armageddon.
In mid-1999 NASA and the US Air Force began a Near-Earth Object search program (now run by JPL) using
existing telescopes to locate 90% of the NEOs larger than 1 kilometer in diameter in ten years. Near-Earth
Objects are those objects that can approach the Sun to within 1.3 AU. The 1-kilometer diameter size is the lower
limit of an impact having a global rather than just a regional effect. As of February 17, 2013, the program has
found 861 asteroids larger than 1 kilometer in diameter and there are about 1382 "Potentially Hazardous
Asteroids (PHAs)" with diameters greater than 150 meters and have orbits that can get within 0.05 AU
(7,480,000 km) of the Earth's orbit (see the NEO Discovery Statistics page for updates). The "potential" in the
PHA term does not mean the PHA will impact the Earth; there is just the possibility it could in the future, so we
must monitor the PHA closely. To find out more about the United States' program go to NASA's Asteroid and
Comet Hazards site and JPL's Asteroid Watch (site intended for the general public with educational materials to
learn about asteroids) or Near-Earth Object Program (site with more in-depth information but not as glitzy as
the Asteroid Watch site).
One process that affects the orbits of asteroids and, therefore, introduces uncertainty in whether a particular
NEA will hit the Earth is the Yarkovsky effect. In the Yarkovsky effect, there is a slight mis-alignment of the
energy emitted by the asteroid and the energy it receives from the Sun. Because any material takes some time to
heat up, the asteroid's afternoon side emits more infrared energy than the morning side. The afternoon emission
of infrared energy from solar heating is not pointed right at the Sun, so the thermal radiation from the asteroid is
not exactly balanced by the solar photons. This results in a pushing that can move the asteroid inward toward
the Sun or away from the Sun. If the asteroid is rotating in the same direction that it moves in its orbit around
the Sun ("prograde rotation"), the asteroid will be pushed away from the Sun; if the asteroid is rotating in the
opposite direction from its orbital motion ("retrograde rotation"), the asteroid will be pushed toward the Sun.
The effect is very small but it is continually acting on the asteroid so over many years it can have a measurable
influence on the asteroid's motion.

Unfortunately for us, the Yarkovsky effect depends on all sorts of features about the asteroid itself that we do
not know: things like the asteroid's size, mass, how the material in the asteroid responds to heat, and most
importantly on the orientation of the asteroid's spin axis (remember the mis-alignment of the noon Sun energy
input direction vs. the afternoon asteroid energy output direction). If the asteroid is tumbling about two or more
axes, then the afternoon infrared radiation it emits from solar heating is randomly directed instead of being in

one consistent direction. Without a consistent direction of the infrared emission, the Yarkovsky effect is
eliminated. A related effect called the "YORP effect" arises from the non-uniform shape and reflectivity of
various parts of the asteroid that can cause one side of the asteroid to be a better emitter of its infrared energy
than another part. The YORP effect can speed up or slow down the asteroid's spin rate and also change the spin
axis direction leading to a possible increase in the Yarkovsky effect.
You can try out your hand at making big craters at the Solar System Collisions website and the Impact Earth
website at Purdue (a nice update of the original Earth Impact Effects Program website). The Killer Asteroids
website is a nice compilation from the Space Science Institute of information about comets and asteroids, how
we find them, and interactives for calculating the effects of impacts on your location of choice (with Google
Earth providing the maps) and for ways of deflecting them.
Deflecting and Using Asteroids
The surprise airburst of an asteroid over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013 followed several hours later by
the very close flyby of another but unrelated asteroid called 2012 DA14 were potent reminders that an impact
can happen any time. Asteroid 2012 DA14 is a near-Earth stony asteroid about 50 meters in diameter that was
discovered just several months before its close flyby of just 27,600 km from the Earth's surface, closer than
even the ring of geosynchronous satellites. That was one we were prepared to observe. The smaller Russia
asteroid was truly a surprise. The airburst of the 17-meter Russia asteroid released as much energy as nearly 500
kilotons of TNT 20-30 kilometers above the surface, knocking out windows for many kilometers around. If
DA14 had hit, it would have released the energy equivalent to 2.4 megatons of TNT. Something like DA14
passes near the Earth every 40 years on average and an impact happens roughly once every 1200 years. Smaller
objects are much more numerous, so something the size of the Russia asteroid impact the Earth roughly once
every several decades. With most of the Earth's surface covered with oceans of water and humans concentrated
in a small fraction of the land area, destructive impacts over population centers are fortunately rare.
Ground-based efforts to find potentially-hazardous asteroids are described in the previous section. The
NEOWISE program that used the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft to discover near-Earth objects
in 2011 after the spacecraft's primary mission was completed showed that a space-based infrared telescope
would find near-Earth objects more efficiently than any ground-based effort could. One special-purpose NEO
search mission is being developed by the privately-funded B612 Foundation with a launch date in mid-2018.
Called "Sentinel", the infrared space telescope will orbit the Sun in a Venus-like orbit to discover and catalog at
least 90% of the near-Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters in diameter as well as finding a large number of
those as small as 30 meters in diameter.
The space-based infrared telescope has a number of advantages over a ground-based search including it would
have a wider search field that includes objects interior to the Earth's orbit as well as those outside of Earth's
orbit, it would more easily find the dark near-Earth asteroids that are quite common, it would have shorter
orbital period so it would cover its search area more quickly, it could operate 24 hours per day, there would be
less confusion from the background stars, and the infrared measurements of the asteroids would provide more
accurate estimates of the asteroid sizes and reflectivity. Objects of special interest that get close enough to Earth
can be studied with radar to get very precise orbit determinations along with rotation, shape, and surface
properties measurements.
Asteroids that are on Earth-impact trajectories can be nudged out of the way by various techniques that are
either precise and gradual long-term pulling or pushing or sudden and less precise impulses. Regardless of the
technique, the key is to apply them while the asteroid is still quite far from the Earth so the nudge does not have
to be as large. In the same way it is easier to change an arrow's path when it is just leaving the bow string than it
is when the arrow is near its target, the farther away the asteroid is from the Earth when we apply the nudge, the
easier it will be to change the asteroid's path. Despite what is portrayed in the movies, our current capabilities
would require the nudge to be given while the asteroid is still several years out from the impact.
In the sudden impulse category we could simply run into the asteroid with a massive spacecraft. A sort of trialrun of such a technique was done successfully when the Deep Impact impactor ran into the nucleus of comet
Tempel 1 (for scientific purposes discussed in a later section) in July 2005. That proved we could hit a small
body from tens of millions of kilometers away. This technique works if the asteroid is solid rock or metal and
not a rubble pile as some (most?) asteroids appear to be. A rubble pile asteroid (fragmented rock) would
efficiently absorb the shock without changing course. We also would not want to risk creating multiple large
fragments that would later hit the Earth. The method loved by movie makers---detonating nuclear warheads---is
in the sudden impulse category. The movies show the warheads striking the asteroid at high speed and blowing
it up. Unfortunately, our current warheads cannot survive impact speeds as high as what they show in the

movies. Actual nuclear detonations would need to be either just off the asteroid's surface, strongly heating one
part of the asteroid and giving the asteroid the needed nudge from the recoil, or from devices embedded within
the asteroid with the hope of fragmenting the asteroid enough so that only a much smaller amount of the
asteroid reaches the Earth. Like the spacecraft impactor option, how well the nuclear option works depends on
the asteroid's composition and structure.
In the gradual long-term applied force category is a technique that has a spacecraft moving alongside the
asteroid and adjusting the asteroid's pass by the gravitational pull of the spacecraft, a "slow-pull gravity tractor".
The spacecraft gravity method does not depend on the asteroid's structure, composition, or rotation. However,
the acceleration supplied by the spacecraft's gravity is extremely small so it would need to act over a long time.
Other examples in this category include pushing the asteroid with an ion beam, attaching a rocket (chemical or
ion) engine to the asteroid, focusing solar energy to enhance the Yarkovsky effect, and a mass driver on the
asteroid that ejects small pieces of the asteroid into space to give the slow steady recoil push. Of course, it is
always possible to use multiple techniques to deflect the asteroid and the gradual long-term applied force
techniques would be most useful if they supplied small course corrections after the more powerful sudden
impulses were used. All of these techniques would require an unprecendented amount of cooperation and
agreement among the nations in planning and implementing the deflection attempts and deciding when to act
and also what happens if the impact site shifts from one country to another because the deflection attempt was
not totally successful.
The near-Earth asteroids are the most worrisome ones for possible impacts but they could also be potentially
very beneficial to us if we could mine them for rare metals and use the asteroids as convenient stepping stones
to manned exploration of the solar system, especially traveling to Mars. The near-Earth asteroids are relatively
abundant in heavy metals like iron and nickel and the platinum-group metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium,
ruthenium, osmium, and iridium) used in modern technology. A kilometer-diameter asteroid would have several
trillion dollars worth of these materials. In fact, all of the heavy metals (iron on up) in the Earth's crust came
from asteroid impacts after the Earth differentiated---the Earth's original supply from its formation is in the
Earth's core. For some near-Earth asteroids it would take less fuel to travel to, land on, and return to Earth than
would a roundtrip to the Moon's surface. The round-trip asteroid trip would take several months and provide the
crucial experience needed to prepare for the more difficult over two-year round-trip to Mars. This experience
would include testing of methods of extracting water from the asteroid's minerals, recycling the water for longduration flights, and using the water as a shield from solar wind, solar eruptions, and cosmic rays. The water
from the asteroids could also be broken down into oxygen and hydrogen to be used as rocket fuel.
In addition to the websites about Near Earth Objects linked to above, another excellent resource to learn more
about the topics discussed in this section is Don Yeomans' book \
Answer in question no.1
If one HIT the planet, it could of course cause some life to be destroyed.
That is why astronomers search for them so there is advance warning if one is on a collision
course with Earth.
Life on earth would be drastically reduced if one were to hit the earth. But if not, the old saying
applies "a miss is as good as a mile".
When the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, with little doubt now because of an
asteroid, the only mamals to survive were rodent-like ones that could burrow underground and
hybernate for something like a year. That's what us humans evolved from.

Astronomers Continue to Monitor Asteroid Apophis

10 Mar , 2011 by Nancy Atkinson
[/caption]
Asteroid Apophis continues to be an object of interest for astronomers. Even though the possibility of an Earth
impact by the now-famous asteroid has been ruled out during its upcoming close encounter on April 13, 2029,
this close flyby will significantly change Apophiss orbit, and astronomers are uncertain how that could affect
future encounters with our planet. For that reason, astronomers have been eager to obtain new data to further
refine the details of the 2029 encounter. However, for three years, the asteroids orbit had it hiding behind the
Sun, but it has now emerged. This newest image of Apophis was taken on January 31, 2011, using the
University of Hawaiis 2.2-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, and astronomers from UH at Manoa say they will
make repeated observations of this potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid.
Astronomers measure the position of an asteroid by comparing with the known positions of stars that appear in
the same image as the asteroid. As a result, any tiny error in the catalog of star positions, due for example to the
very slow motions of the stars around the center of our Milky Way galaxy, can affect the measurement of the
position of the asteroid.
We will need to repeat the observation on several different nights using different stars to average out this
source of imprecision before we will be able to significantly improve the orbit of Apophis and therefore the
details of the 2029 close approach and future impact possibilities, said astronomer David Tholen, one of the
co-discoverers of Apophis, who made the latest observations along with graduate students Marco Micheli and
Garrett Elliott.
They obtained the new images when the 270-meter (900-foot) diameter asteroid was less than 44 degrees from
the sun and about a million times fainter than the faintest star that the average human eye can see without
optical aid.
The astronomers will be taking advantage of Apophiss position for the next few months, as its elliptical orbit
around the Sun will take it back into the suns glare this summer, making observations and measurements of
its position impossible. However, in 2012, Apophis will again become observable for approximately nine
months. In 2013, the asteroid will pass close enough to Earth for ultraprecise radar signals to be bounced off its
surface.
Radar observations are important because we can estimate orbital parameters and provides us lots of
information about an asteroids surface features and internal structure, and how they may have formed, said
Lance Benner, an astronomer at JPL, who specializes in radar imaging of near-Earth asteroids. We need to
know these things if we are going to deflect one of these. Speaking at the American Geophysical Union
conference in 2009, Benner said radar is the most powerful astronomical technique for both finding new
asteroids and measuring their orbits.