Obliteration A.D.
[Image: A film-still taken from this look at the Earth's complete destruction – the whole planet, shattered – after it's been hit by a 100km-wide asteroid. Boiling tidal waves of impact magma! Hot stuff – via New Scientist. Note: the film is in Japanese].
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5 Comments:
It's always darkest before it's totally black.
What I want to know is, when it hits, would all the people on the other side of the planet fly off from the transfer of momentum through the planet? You know, like one of those executive stress ball click-clack things?
Pretty dramatic, but without being able to understand the Japanese narration, I'm sure I missed a lot.
Doug Hendersen's book, Asteroid Impact, does a great job of helping young readers (and old readers) understand some of the physics behind a asteroid impact. It's worth a look see.
I especially like the way Henderson shows what would happen to a concrete wall if hit by various objects, each moving ten times faster than the previous object. That preps us to imagine what would happen in the case of an asteroid impact.
I used this book when teaching a class about natural catastrophes to upper elemetarty students. The kids all imagined that, when scaled to match the classroom globe, the asteroid would be the size of a golf ball or a marble. They were rather surprised when I held up a grain of sand and suggested that it was to scale.
Now that would ruin my whole day!
For everyone who doesn't speak or understand Japanese, like me, please look right beside the video. There is an "About This Video" box, where you can read the transcription of it.
(Click on "more" to read it all)
HTH
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