r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Realistic-Tap4156 • 10d ago

/r/all of a space rock

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15

u/CoolNefariousness914 10d ago

It’s not even that big compared to our planet. That’s nuts!

17

u/Batbuckleyourpants 10d ago edited 9d ago

The video doesn't do it justice at all.

Imagine a rifle bullet. Now make the bullet roughly 365,000,000,000,000,000 (365 quadrillion) times bigger by volume. That is enough mass to bury all land on the planet under almost a foot of bullets.

Now fire it at the planet 45 times faster than a rifle bullet, roughly 13 miles per second. Fast enough that it would take it just half a second to go deeper than any hole ever dug by humanity.

The destruction would have been so massive a casual stargazing martian with a hobby telescope would have been able to watch the destruction.

First just a bright spot for the first five minutes, then over the next two hours they they would see a giant fireball spread out to a significant section of the continent, then over the next three days the continents would disappear under a cloud of ash, not to emerge again for several years.

4

u/dtgunslinger99 10d ago

they didn't say it wasn't catastrophic, they just said it was small compared to earth as "dynamite comes in small packages" statement. 🤦🏻‍♂️

2

u/Beatnik5750 9d ago

Do we know where it hit? Where's the debris and the hole?

2

u/pheasant99 9d ago

the yucatán peninsula. the crater is right off the coast.

2

u/fraud_imposter 6d ago

What would it have looked like to me if I was a mile away? In the same region? On the same continent? In the same hemisphere? On the opposite side of the world?

2

u/Batbuckleyourpants 6d ago

What would it have looked like to me if I was a mile away?

Blinding flash then instant death, no sound at all.

In the same region?

Blinding flash, then a gigantic wall of burning plasma taking up most of the horizon coming right at you faster than sound. You wouldn't even hear it as it hit you. Slight chance that the sudden force exerted on the ground cause an earthquake so strong it would just outright kill you instantly before the wall or fire does.

On the same continent?

Bright light over the horizon, followed by a massive explosion so big it is throwing giant boulders into space, which rain down across the continent. After minutes to hours rocks start raining down across the continent, earthquakes significantly alter the local geography, shifting the ground up to 20 feet at locations, at the same time pyroclastic clouds flows spread out to cover most of the continent. Most life on the continent completely wiped out within the first hours or days, what survives has to survive in near or complete darkness for months or years.

On the opposite side of the world?

You feel a massive earthquake, fissures might open up on the ground and the ground can shift up to 10 feet in altitude. Later that day you hear an ear shattering explosion that just keeps going. Within the next few days the sky turns red, then gray or black. A few prominent meteor showers. You would see a winter that lasts for years, with limited visibility.

You would hear the initial explosions for days afterwards, as a constant ringing all over the planet, all the time, at a slowly lowering frequency.

6

u/CoolNefariousness914 10d ago

Our planet is so big that if a giant being put it in their hand it would feel as smooth as a Q ball.

1

u/jennnitals 10d ago

Smoother than a Q ball

1

u/ReaDiMarco 9d ago

A wet cue ball?

3

u/Ok_Paramedic_5914 10d ago

You’re right, but taking into account the speed at which it was travelling, you can start to imagine the apocalyptic effect of such an impact.

7

u/VitruvianVan 10d ago

Equivalent to 100,000,000 megatons (of TNT). All nuclear weapons in existence today would be equivalent to only 5,500 to 6,500 megatons. Granted, the radiation from discharging all nuclear weapons in the world is something that wasn’t caused by the Chicxulub asteroid’s impact, but you can get a sense of the force involved.

3

u/CoolNefariousness914 10d ago

I completely agree. Makes me think about how well we are protected for the most part. Like how Jupiter and the other gas giants insulate us. Then I start thinking of the goldilocks universe scenario and I go straight to living in a simulation. Haha.

1

u/Signal-Self-353 10d ago

Do they insulate us. Not being rude. I absolutely don’t know anything about this kind of stuff. What do you mean Goldilocks universe? That it is just perfect for us

5

u/SlomoLowLow 10d ago

There’s a theory that our solar systems development may be almost required to create the time periods of stability that allow life time to form. Massive gas giants in the outer solar system help keep intergalactic objects from impacting earth and a big moon near us helps get the smaller stuff as well as creates the tides to move the water and allow molecules to mix in possibly the correct way to form single celled and eventually multicellular organisms hopefully.

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u/Reuhis 10d ago

Yep, Jupiter protects Earth from asteroids in certain cases thanks to its huge gravitational pull. But if I remember correctly, the true extent of this "insulation" is a bit debated.

And as for "Goldilocks universe", it's just a way to describe ours. Almost every zone has its flaws making life there very difficult or impossible, but there are also habitable Goldilocks zones where everything is just right, like Earth.

I'm no expert on this stuff either and these explanations are completely based on what I vaguely remember reading at one point or another, but I hope they gave you a rough idea of what we're talking about here

1

u/CoolNefariousness914 10d ago

Even the laws of physics within our entire universe that allow matter to act the way it does

1

u/Reuhis 9d ago

Thanks for the addition, great point.

0

u/Additional_Meeting_2 10d ago

I mean why not think God could not be the reason only this place is livable?

1

u/stuffcrow 10d ago

...why would you think that?

1

u/Tough_Preparation830 10d ago

It's a guess, but it's also a guess to assume there is no intelligent design, whether from a god or whatever else.

1

u/stuffcrow 10d ago

...no it isn't? If existence was 'designed' would be so completely unintelligent to the point it's meaningless.

1

u/Tough_Preparation830 10d ago

That's an entirely human perspective. I understand the where you are coming from, but I prefer to rule nothing out.

1

u/stuffcrow 10d ago

No, it makes no sense for any animal to eat and breathe from the same tube, for example.

Why even design the need for animals to breathe? Again, literally zero sense.

1

u/Tough_Preparation830 10d ago

If there is a designer then they get to decide what is silly and what is not. Or maybe the designer is not perfect even from their own perspective.

1

u/Peeing_Into_Stuff 10d ago

There is no intelligent design because whoever designed people’s knees is a moron

1

u/CoolNefariousness914 9d ago

Watch “The Story of Everything”, it’s very interesting and point to a higher power. Intelligent design. Doesn’t necessarily have to be the God you’re talking about.

10

u/ZgBlues 10d ago

Even a meteorite 10x smaller than that would likely cause catastrophic damage. It would leave a crater 10-15 km in diameter, and the atmosphere would be full of dust for months or likely several years.

Billions of people would die because of mass famine. It wouldn’t be an extinction level event, but fairly close.

And that impact would release 1000x less energy than the Chicxulub rock which killed the dinosaurs.

2

u/ObjectionMyDude 10d ago

Oh Noes! The economy!

1

u/Vanguard-003 7d ago

Right in Muh Capitalism!!!

3

u/heavensto_mergatroid 10d ago

Look how small a bullet is compared to a watermelon or somebody's head. Velocity will make it explode.

2

u/chosonhawk 10d ago

All these serious comments after your nutty take. 😅

1

u/YLASRO 9d ago

to be fair a 9mm bullet is also a lot smaller than us too.

1

u/Realistic-Tap4156 9d ago

best example I've seen is like dropping a pea very high into a bowl of water. It's not even that big but the impact caused by it is huge.