11-14-2017, 08:43 AM | #251 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
An impact against the near side though could cause a massive ecological disaster as hundreds or thousands of projectiles with an average radius of 100 m could rain down upon the Earth.
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11-14-2017, 09:04 AM | #252 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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Worst case- armageddon on Earth. Millions of tons of rocky debris falls into Earth's atmosphere, over a couple decade timescale, causing catastrophic impacts and severe atmospheric heating. Might need something bigger than the Chixculub meteor though to get that effect.
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11-14-2017, 12:12 PM | #253 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
Just rough estimates here, one 100-ton rock that could hit the Earth at dangerous velocities, if it instead hit the moon, would probably have much less than 50% efficiency at dropping moon rocks on Earth at dangerous velocities.
That's not to say that it's a bad approach; a lunar debris storm after a, say, Ceres-sized object strikes the moon would result in a very interesting world exactly because it is one with a heavy rain of smaller impacts. Plus the moon would be glowing orange, so that would be cool too. |
11-14-2017, 12:29 PM | #254 |
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
Dinosaur hunting for the seriously hardcore cross time hunter.
I suppose an angular hit on the moon while the rock is inbound to Sol would be the worst case. Trading in the slug hit of the original dino killer for a spray of shotgun pellets. I guess it would all come down to details of the impact after all. |
11-14-2017, 12:35 PM | #255 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
Again it depends on how bad it has to be to be a Lucifer.
Even a relatively localized disaster could destroy say the burgeoning populations of humanity in Mesopotamia, dropping everyone back into the stone age. "Better" still if it causes just enough of climate change as to negate any other starting agricultural pockets. I suppose it really depends on the TL of the locals as to how bad things must be to be really really bad. Or it could go full on Cowboy Bepop inhospitable Earth from Moon debris.
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11-14-2017, 12:40 PM | #256 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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11-14-2017, 12:50 PM | #257 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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Perhaps there is a near-miss, relatively, not moon-near but close. It goes by, spotted and noted by Earth astronomers, but by the time it was figured to go near Earth, it was known that it wasn't going to hit the Earth (or the moon). So just a weird astronomical event. But then the body gets into an orbit around the sun, and threatens a 'second pass' that might hit the Earth (or the moon). Now people are worried. And even if it misses the Earth/moon, could come back again & again until its hits it. Quote:
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11-14-2017, 12:55 PM | #258 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
That totally depends on how fast it enters our system. Below the escape velocity of the sun and it will stay. If it's faster like the recently discovered extrasolar rock, then nope. It's just visiting.
http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/breakin...ote-not-aliens In case anyone's missed this awesome discovery.
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11-14-2017, 01:28 PM | #259 | |
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: New York, NY
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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If an extrasolar asteroid is moving slow enough to get captured by the sun, its subsequent orbit would still be highly erratic, right? Not just parabolic like a comet, but still swinging this way and that thanks to the initial extrasolar momentum, before 'settling down'. I'm just wondering if such an asteroid could immediately settle into an Earth-grazing orbit (even one that is slightly erratic enough to eventually hit the Earth), or if it might not have different loops initially, only going near Earth once (if at all). |
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11-14-2017, 02:59 PM | #260 | |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: Lucy's Choice: Let's make Lucifer Parallels!
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