Armageddon on Jupiter
On July 19, 2009, a heavenly body, modest on a cosmic scale, the size of our Earth, crashed into Jupiter. The first to notice this event was Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, then more detailed pictures of the incident were taken.
Jupiter suffered this collision without any special shocks because of its gaseous essence, the main mass of which is hydrogen and helium. For the Earth, such a collision would be catastrophic.
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Over the past 15 years, this is the second case of a collision recorded from Earth, the first time Jupiter collided with some large parts of the comet Shoemaker-Levy, flying at a speed of ~ 64 km / s. At that time, the estimated energy release was 750 times higher than the entire nuclear potential accumulated on Earth.
It is worth paying attention to the fact that it was precisely an amateur astronomer who first noticed the consequences of the collision - mathematically no one had previously calculated this possibility, it was noticed that it was in fact an accident. Do I have to say that even in the event of a collision with an object of an order of magnitude smaller mass, the Earth is likely to survive it in a completely different guise?
Someday, scientists will have to directly face the problem of repelling such a collision. Let's leave Bruce Willis and his gallant team behind the scenes and try to imagine what humanity can do to defend itself in 50 years.
The most realistic is the use of nuclear weapons for partial destruction and change of the flight path of even a large space body, but before that it still needs to be delivered to the right place at the right time, which now does not seem real. The maximum speed reached by the spacecraft in the entire history of mankind is about ~ 69 km / s (solar probe "Helios-B").
What options would you suggest to save the Earth from the impending catastrophe?
UPD: According to updated data with reference to NASA, the size of the object was significantly smaller - with a diameter of several football fields :) However, the scale is still impressive
Jupiter suffered this collision without any special shocks because of its gaseous essence, the main mass of which is hydrogen and helium. For the Earth, such a collision would be catastrophic.
')
Over the past 15 years, this is the second case of a collision recorded from Earth, the first time Jupiter collided with some large parts of the comet Shoemaker-Levy, flying at a speed of ~ 64 km / s. At that time, the estimated energy release was 750 times higher than the entire nuclear potential accumulated on Earth.
It is worth paying attention to the fact that it was precisely an amateur astronomer who first noticed the consequences of the collision - mathematically no one had previously calculated this possibility, it was noticed that it was in fact an accident. Do I have to say that even in the event of a collision with an object of an order of magnitude smaller mass, the Earth is likely to survive it in a completely different guise?
Someday, scientists will have to directly face the problem of repelling such a collision. Let's leave Bruce Willis and his gallant team behind the scenes and try to imagine what humanity can do to defend itself in 50 years.
The most realistic is the use of nuclear weapons for partial destruction and change of the flight path of even a large space body, but before that it still needs to be delivered to the right place at the right time, which now does not seem real. The maximum speed reached by the spacecraft in the entire history of mankind is about ~ 69 km / s (solar probe "Helios-B").
What options would you suggest to save the Earth from the impending catastrophe?
UPD: According to updated data with reference to NASA, the size of the object was significantly smaller - with a diameter of several football fields :) However, the scale is still impressive
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/66260/
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