I'm sorry for not updating my blog recently. In the future, I will try to be better about doing something every day, or at least something close to it. So, without further ado, today's entry!
Today is Sunday, but this is going to be an apocalyptic blog. This topic is more related to astronomy than geology, like last time. This event has also happened before, and when it did, it wiped out Earth's dominant species. Asteroids!
The impact that we remember is the one that occurred in Russia on February 15, 2013. The damage didn't come from the meteor hitting the Earth, but rather an explosion caused by the friction of the meteor traveling through the atmosphere. Even so, the energy released was equivalent to 500 kilotons tons of TNT, or about 25 times more powerful than Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The most powerful strike in recorded history happened in Russia as well (I know, they have bad luck). Known as the Tungunka event, its destruction was caused by the meteor bursting in mid-air rather than colliding with the ground. The explosion that occurred on June 30th, 1908 released the same energy as 30 megatons of TNT, or 1,000 times greater than Little Boy, which was enough to flatten around 80 million tress around the impact site.
However, the most powerful impact ever has probably happened about 3.26 billion years ago. The meteor was probably about 30 miles wide., Scientists have only found evidence of the impact in South Africa in 2014. However, an actual crater has not been found yet.
So what's next? Well, an asteroid five miles or wider would trigger another mass extinction, like with the dinosaurs. The scary part? The Kuiper Belt, a ring of objects just beyond Neptune, contains about 100,000 objects more than 50 miles in diameter, many of which fall toward the Sun every year. Yikes.
On one last note, the Moon was created by a large asteroid the size of Mars smashing into a young Earth, and the debris created the Moon in a week. This is what probably happened:
Until next time,
Ben's jamin'
Benjamin
P.S. Make sure you check out John's math blog at http://johncooksmathblog.blogspot.com.
Cool! Nice blog. I've been wondering when the next one would show up . . . Thanks!
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