Potential Apophis asteroid damage?
I know now that NASA has confirmed that Apophis will not strike Earth on 2029 or 2036 a few days ago, but I was wondering what kind of damage would have the asteroid caused if it was on a direct collision? How would us humans be affected after that?
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Remember, Apophis is less than 300 meters across. So while a direct hit will cause a lot of damage in the area, it won't be a global catastrophe.
Estimates of Apophis's path if a 2036 Earth impact were to occur results in a narrow corridor a few kilometers wide running across southern Russia, across the north Pacific (relatively close to the coastlines of California and Mexico), then between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, crossing northern Colombia and Venezuela, ending in the Atlantic, just before reaching Africa.
The B612 Foundation, using the computer simulation tool NEOSim, estimated that the hypothetical impact of Apophis in countries such as Colombia and Venezuela could have more than 10 million casualties. And of course an impact in the ocean would produce a devastating tsunami.
The dust of a land impact could block the sun for some time, and there could be global cooling as a result.
An impact with Apophis has been estimated at 510 megatons of TNT.
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was roughly 200 megatons.
Naturaly it would be devastating within thousands of square kilometers of the impact, but Apophos is not expected to create a global impact winter.
The Chicxulub impact that killed the dinosaurs has been estimated to have released about as much energy as 100,000,000 megatons.
Chuck Norris would give it a roundhouse and kick it into the Oort cloud!!
well depending on the speed it COULD knock us off our course and we could spin into space, become freezing like pluto or something and all die.
Or it could just simply attach to us, and everyone could die because well first, it would crush a lot of people, and it would probably alter our eco system and the planet and how it works etc, it could also bring a disease to us that would kill us all.
Basically we'd die. Or have to live underground. But as I said it could change how our planet works... yeah basically we would just die.