Could a thousand nukes > a single, but huge meteor?

[Zeonix]

Well if you're going to make up bs scenarios: We just made 999,999,999,999 gigaton nuke.

 

[Killface]

I dont think that an abomb the size of a pen would destroy even one city block. And yeah, a meteor the size of a basketball moving at 1\2 the speed of sound would take out the earth, but it'd have to be as compact as a diamond.

 

[Zeonix]

Considering the a-bomb was about the size of a table and destroyd quite a few miles, I'm thinking thats not way off.

Half the speed of sound? Thats the slowest asteroid ever considering theres no air friction in space. I have an idea. Send a nuke in a rocket to Pluto, have it come back to Earth at 50k mph and see what happens o.0.

 

[SailorAlea]

Given the fact that even the soviets back in the day were capable of making weapons 3800x more powerful than the bombs we destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima with, I'd say it's pretty fair to wager that we could, given enough warning time to prepare, destroy a Texas-sized meteor with nuclear weapons. I don't think it would have to be 'thousands,' just a few insanely powerful ones.

 

[Killface]

@ Zeonix - Yeah, i meant the speed of LIGHT, not the speed of sound. My bad there.

And yes, i stand corrected about the pen sized nuke. of course, that wont hold a whole lot of uranium or plutonium... whichever you decide to use, so the blast wont be as powerful.

 

[Smith|]

And yeah, a meteor the size of a basketball moving at 1\2 the speed of sound would take out the earth, but it'd have to be as compact as a diamond.

Sorry, but I seriously doubt that. Even with the 'speed of light' correction, I still seriously doubt that.

 

[Zeonix]

Especially since no asteroid will ever travel at half the speed of light.

 

[MC]

My example was just an exageration, I apologize for not giving a more logical senario, same goes with an atomic bomb the size of a pen. What I was trying to say with the pen sized atomic bomb is that an atomic bomb is more destructive than convention explosives.

Here's another example: You have a briefcase full of dynamite, you place it within an abandoned city on a city block. You detonate it, what happens? A few buildings get damaged. If you had a briefcase with an atomic bomb in it, and do the same as you did with the briefcase full of dynamite, what would happen? The city block (and probably a few more city blocks) would be demolished.

The thing about the meteor: Meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere travelling close to the speed of sound (I don't know the exact speed), that's enough to leave a huge creator. If you had a meteor that was travel at half the speed of light (which is extremely faster than the speed of sound) then probably the Earth would get demolished, or severely damaged, or just have a huge creator in it.

 

[Zeonix]

A few blocks? Try about 20 miles.

 

[CM]

Tsar Bomba (H-bomb tested by the USSR) WAS originally some 130+ Megatons powerful, but it was stripped down, because of fear of the pilot of the plane not getting away in time.

According to a video I saw, Tsar Bomba (the weaker version) could eat 1/3 of England.

 

[Fire Phoenix]

I like how you guys don't consider the fact that things burn up as they enter the earths atmosphere. If you have a basketball sized meteor traveling toward earth, it's not going to touch earth. It will incinerate itself before it does. Just like a meteor the size of texas, is that before or after it hits earth? Before, it'll be a lot smaller, after; we're ****ed.

@Kurt`: LoL

 

[SailorAlea]

It's true that our atmosphere protects us. But really, asteroids aren't going to be reduced that much. Even an asteroid the size of a golfball will do significant damage to a building if it hits. If it hits at the size of a golfball, it was probably about the size of a small chevy before entering the upper atmo., but don't think of it as being a percentage reduction--if an asteroid "the size of Texas" passes through, you can be sure it's only going to be reduced in size by a small fraction.

Edit: I stand corrected!

What damage would an Asteroid Impact cause?
A near earth Object (NEO) does not need to be large to devastate. One the size of a small garage would annihilate a large city. One big enough to leave a 10km crater, still nowhere near the size of the biggest (there is a 300km crater on Earth), would have the destructive force of every one of the world's 10,000 nuclear warhead combined.

http://www.armageddononline.org/asteroid.php

 

[DiebytheSword]

Yeah, asteroids are a little different than meteors and meteorites, there are no small "asteroids".

Any NEO would pretty much cause incalcuable damage.

 

[Killface]

Tsar Bomba (H-bomb tested by the USSR) WAS originally some 130+ Megatons powerful, but it was stripped down, because of fear of the pilot of the plane not getting away in time.

According to a video I saw, Tsar Bomba (the weaker version) could eat 1/3 of England.

I knew I heard something about Tsar Bomba being that powerful. I just thought it was 160+ megatons, not 130+. Thats why I said it when I first made my post.