What would REALLY happen if an asteroid struck the ocean: Simulation reveals impact would launch BILLIONS of tons of water into the atmosphere
- If it hit far from coastlines, massive waves would die down before hitting cities
- But, impact would have devastating effects if within 10-20km from the coast
- Bigger threat would come from billions of tons of water vapor injected in the air
- This could loft into the stratosphere and linger for months, altering the climate
If
an asteroid were to slam into Earth, there’s a strong chance it would
end up at sea, with oceans covering roughly 70 percent of our planet’s
surface.
An
impact would have devastating effects if it occurred within 10-20
kilometers of a city's coastline, potentially killing thousands of
people - but if it hit out in the middle of the ocean, the massive waves
generated by the collision would quickly die down.
A
new simulation reveals that the destructive waves would be unable to
travel long distances, preventing city-swallowing tsunamis from reaching
the shorelines.
Water
vapour, instead, could pose a larger threat – the impact would launch
billions of tons of the greenhouse gas into the air, with potential to
linger in the stratosphere for months or even years.
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The
visualization from the Los Alamos National Laboratory shows what would
happen if an asteroid slammed into the ocean. This revealed that, if it
occured far from the coastlines, the threat of a tsunami hitting cities
would be low. But, water vapour would pose a greater risk
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN
If
an asteroid struck the ocean, the researchers say it would create a
transient crater, launching a splash curtain into the air.
As water rushes into the crater, a jet would form - and this could be several kilometers high.
The jet would then collapse to form a rim wave, which would be hundreds of meters high.
A new water jet would form, and create a new rim wave, and the process would go on.
Each rim wave has potential to become a tsunami, the researchers explain.
Far away from the coastlines, however, the risks to populated areas would be low.
A larger threat may come from the large amounts of water vapour sent into the air, which would be lofted into the stratosphere.
The greenhouse gas could linger for months or years, with severe implications for the global climate.
The new visualization from the Los Alamos National Laboratory comes as a result of NASA’s Second International Workshop on Asteroid Threat Assessment.
Given
the likelihood of an asteroid making impact with the ocean if it were
set to hit Earth, the researchers explored what the risks of a resulting
tsunami would be.
Scientists
at LANL used high performance computing to investigate how an
asteroid’s kinetic energy is transferred to the atmosphere and the
ocean.
They created simulations with varying asteroid size, angle of impact, and whether or not it exploded in an airburst.
The simulations focused on three materials: basalt asteroid, static air, and static water.
The
investigation revealed that more kinetic energy would be transferred to
the water, and in the largest scenario, the visualization shows how a
250-meter-wide asteroid could create a transient crater, giving rise to a
massive plume of water and water vapour.
But,
the researchers say, colliding shockwaves in the atmosphere and water,
along with the wind at the water’s surface would hinder the creation of a
propagating wave.
Scientists at LANL used high
performance computing to investigate how an asteroid’s kinetic energy is
transferred to the atmosphere and the ocean. They created simulations
with varying asteroid size, angle of impact, and whether or not it
exploded in an airburst
It
also revealed that a direct impact with the water would be more likely
to create a tsunami than an airburst would, in contrast to what’s
previously been thought.
An
airburst would break the asteroid apart, the researchers explain,
causing much of it to skim the surface rather than slamming into it.
Even
if it wouldn’t travel hundreds of miles to threaten cities, an asteroid
that hit the ocean would still create waves of staggering enormity.
‘Immediately
upon impact, a transient crater is created and a splash curtain is
thrown high into the air,’ the researchers explain.
An impact would have devastating
effects if it occurred within 10-20 kilometers of a city's coastline,
but if it hit out in the middle of the ocean, the massive waves
generated by the collision would quickly die down. Stock image
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