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Chance for a Tunguska Sized Impact on Mars

Posted by Soulskill on Fri Dec 21, 2007 07:19 AM
from the flying-rocks-that-will-not-kill-us dept.
Mars Space Science
Multiple users have written to tell us of an LA Times report that an asteroid may hit Mars on January 30th. The asteroid is roughly 160 feet across, and JPL-based researchers say that it will have a 1-in-75 chance of striking Mars. Those odds are very high for this type of event, and scientists are hoping to witness an impact of a similar scope to the Tunguska disaster. From the LA Times: "Because scientists have never observed an asteroid impact -- the closest thing being the 1994 collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter -- such a collision on Mars would produce a 'scientific bonanza,' Chesley said."
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story

Related Stories

[+] Technology: Tunguska Blast Was a Small Asteroid 277 comments
malachiorion writes "The Tunguska event, an explosion on June 30, 1908, cleared an 800-sq.-mi. swath of Siberian forest. Was it a UFO crash? An alien weapons test? Now, Sandia National Laboratories has released its own explanation for the Tunguska event. Using supercomputers to create a 3D simulation of the explosion, the Department of Energy-funded nuke lab has determined that Tunguska was, indeed, the explosion of a relatively small asteroid. The simulation videos are well worth checking out — they show a fireball slamming into the earth from the asteroid's air burst. The researchers caution that we should be keeping watch for many more small, potentially earth-impacting asteroids than we are currently tracking."
Firehose:A Chance for a Tunguska Sized Impact on Mars by Anonymous Coward
[+] Mars Asteroid Impact More Likely Than Before 207 comments
sheldie writes "The probability of asteroid 2007 WD5 impacting Mars has been revised following further observations. The chance of impact has increased from 1.3% to 3.9%" This is a follow-up to earlier coverage of this asteroid from last week.
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Chance for a Tunguska Sized Impact on Mars 25 Comments More /

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  • Glad it's not us, eh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Loibisch (964797) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:26AM (#21777272)

    [...] and scientists are hoping to witness an impact of a similar scope to the Tunguska disaster.
    Won't somebody PLEASE think of the marsians? :(

  • *no signal* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 6Yankee (597075) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:28AM (#21777284)
    It'll probably take something as dramatic as a direct hit from a meteorite to finish Spirit or Opportunity off.

  • Has someone (Score:4, Funny)

    by nrgy (835451) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:29AM (#21777294)
    informed the UAC base on Mars of the impending DOOM that is heading there way?

    • UAC ? (Score:5, Funny)

      by hostyle (773991) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:35AM (#21777326)
      Windows has detected an incoming Asteroid.

      If you started this action, continue.

        [Continue] [Cancel]

      User Account Control helps stop unauthorized changes to your planet.

  • scientific bonanza? (Score:5, Funny)

    by rucs_hack (784150) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:32AM (#21777312)
    Um, so first a huge collection of rocks smacks into Jupiter, now another may hit Mars, and they're excited?

    They sound awfully like ranging shots to me, I'm more inclined to get Venus to light the third cigarette and then be wery, wery, qwiet...

  • Bad for studying Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Proud like a god (656928) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:32AM (#21777314) Homepage
    If it does hit or in some other way cloud the atmosphere of Mars, would this put the brakes on current and planned future studies of the planet?

    A few years of darkened skies could finish off the rovers, or require better orbiting surveillance equipment, no?

    • Re:Bad for studying Mars? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cheater512 (783349) <nick@nickstallman.net> on Friday December 21 2007, @08:01AM (#21777472) Homepage
      This is just a baby. There will be some fireworks, a big boom and some excited NASA scientists. :)
      No extensive dust cloud or anything like that.

      • Re:Bad for studying Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Johnno74 (252399) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:00AM (#21777464)
        Even if it did, what we would learn would make it a more than fair trade. The mars rovers have done exceptionally well, but they won't last forever anyway. Its time to start thinking about the next generation of rovers, and manned missions back to the moon & to mars.

        Also, the massive publicity if there was a hit, with the sorts of pictures NASA would get would hugely increase public interest and support in making sure we can predict early enough and prevent the same thing never happens here.

      • Re:Bad for studying Mars? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Peter Lake (260100) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:32AM (#21777634)
        The Tunguska asteroid exploded in the atmosphere, it did not hit the ground and raise dust.
        If 2007-WD5 hits Mars it will probably not explode in the thin atmosphere but impact Martian soil and raise huge amounts of dust. Martian dust is fine-grained and lightweight, and can raise high in the atmosphere - as we have seen during the dust storms. So I guess the dust plume would not stay localized, and it could mean trouble for the rovers and even for the Phoenix-lander.

        On the other hand the impact-crater would be very interesting to probe!

  • It'd be so awesome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QuantumG (50515) <qg@biodome.org> on Friday December 21 2007, @07:35AM (#21777330) Homepage Journal
    We'd be talking about it for decades. It might actually wake up some people to the NEA threat to our own planet. It might have a devastating and instant effect on the atmosphere of Mars.. which could actually make the planet a little warmer and a little more hospitable.

  • And if it doesn't hit... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CubicleView (910143) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:35AM (#21777334) Journal
    Even if it misses it should still be a little interesting. If it comes that close, its orbit will be greatly affected, observing the results should be useful?

  • New rover mission? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xelios (822510) on Friday December 21 2007, @07:48AM (#21777412)
    If the asteroid does hit the impact site would probably make for a good rover mission. Fresh samples of long buried rock without the extra hassle of having to dig it up!

  • beagle... (Score:5, Funny)

    by apodyopsis (1048476) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:03AM (#21777486)
    Get the cameras rolling, I'm sure it'll be a better impact then the Beagle meteorite simulation of a few years ago.

    :-)

    (I do feel bad for poking fun at Beagle, many people much smarter then me put a lot of work into that probe.)

  • It won't be the same. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 21 2007, @08:07AM (#21777506)
    The received wisdom used to be that the meteorite, that caused the disaster in Tunguska, exploded above the surface of the earth. It entered the atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle and heated up much more than it would have if it had come straight down. The result was that a long relatively narrow area of forest was knocked down and there was no impact crater.

    On Mars, the atmosphere is much less dense than that of the earth. The meteor in question is large. If it hits Mars, it will reach the surface, it won't vaporize in the atmosphere. The result will be much more like other impacts on the earth that did leave craters. In that light, the comparison with Tunguska doesn't make much sense. I don't know where Steve Chesley got his information on the size of the rock that exploded over Siberia but I bet it wasn't 160 feet across. Something that size would make it to the Earth's surface.

  • Tungusta "disaster"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamP2 (1097897) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:14AM (#21777536)
    "Disaster" is a pretty hypy label for an event which led to no known loss of human life or property, and caused no significant environmental damage (yes, a lot of trees fell and some wildlife may have died, but it's not like it destroyed an ecosystem or led to an extinction of any species).

    Most modern industrial projects are a bigger "disaster" in this sense than Tunguska. The event should be referred to as "phenomenon", or maybe just a "boom", but not a "disaster".

  • Are folks forgetting the relative lack air on mars (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Almost-Retired (637760) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:19AM (#21777554)
    I'll bet they are. Because we have this nice dense atmosphere to sustain our breathing, we tend to forget that mars has only 2 or 3% of the surface air pressure to heat and absorb energy from an incoming rock like we have. The damage will be from a direct surface hit at the rocks full speed and should be visible if it hits on our side of mars, and it will no doubt toss up a few megatons of ejecta, which due to the speed of the wind, will take a while to settle. That does have the possibility of finishing off the rovers. There is a slim chance some of the ejecta may even make it to earth and be found on the antarctic snow eventually, giving us a few more samples of our neighbor to study.

    If it hits where we can see it, it should be quite a show and I hope they have a good number of our telescopes, even Hubble, recording like crazy.

    I guess we'll find out January 30th. But if its on the far side, we may have to do before and after photo comparisons to find the crater once the dust has settled, and that won't be near as informative as a near side hit would be.

    Humm, recently the chinese were accused of doctoring a moon photo. Makes me wonder if the moved crater might in fact be a new one?

    --
    Cheers, Gene
    "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
      soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
    -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
    10) there is no 10, but it sounded like a nice number :)
                    -- Wichert Akkerman
  • Ack ack ack ack, ack-ack ack ack-ack.

    Ack, ack ACK-ack-ack, ack-ack ack-ack ack. Ack ack, ack-ack-ack-ack, ack ack ack.

    Ack ack,

    Ack-ack Ack-ack-ack-ack.

  • I'm guessing (Score:4, Funny)

    by (arg!)Styopa (232550) on Friday December 21 2007, @01:02PM (#21780646) Journal
    That's where Phobos and Deimos came from as well.

    Maybe they get a baby brother for Christmas!

    • Sorry Mate... (Score:4, Funny)

      by PinkyDead (862370) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:50AM (#21777722) Journal
      Prime Directive and all that.

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by QuantumG (50515) <qg@biodome.org> on Friday December 21 2007, @08:44AM (#21777694) Homepage Journal
        That's the funny thing about mega-events in chaotic systems, you never know what might happen.

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by iainl (136759) on Friday December 21 2007, @08:49AM (#21777720)
        Except that the whole "nuclear winter" thing works by increasing the albedo of the planet. Venus is under constant, DEEP (the tropopause is at around 65km up) cloud cover already. Greenhouse effects massively outweigh the cooling from cloud cover.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Arancaytar (966377) <arancaytar.ilyaran@gmail.com> on Friday December 21 2007, @10:23AM (#21778438) Homepage
        The nuclear winter is a concept that works only on Earth due to our unique atmosphere which lets a bit of sunlight in and prevents a bit of that from radiating out, thus warming our planet. If our atmosphere grew a bit more dusty, we'd reflect more sunlight and become colder.

        You cannot apply this concept to Mars, which has no greenhouse effect in the first place. Its surface reflects most of the sunlight already, so reflective dust in its thin atmosphere would make no difference. You also can't apply it to Venus, which is a greenhouse. Its atmosphere is already highly reflective, and it is only as hot as it is because the tiny amount of sunlight it absorbs is prevented from escaping.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

        by ceoyoyo (59147) on Friday December 21 2007, @10:46AM (#21778688)
        This isn't a big impactor. It won't cause any serious global effects, on Mars, Venus or Earth.

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