[meteorite-list] LANL: Meteor Could Cause Big Tsunami

[Chris Peterson]

Are you sure about that? There is some question about the dynamics of the 
water displacement- that is, most of it goes up, not out. And that total 
volume of water is somewhere between a few tens and few hundreds of cubic 
kilometers. Contrast that with the recent Indian Ocean event. The shift in 
the ocean floor resulted in the displacement of over 1000 cubic kilometers 
of water, and produced waves in most locations of 3-5 meters.

While an asteroid impact seems like a dramatic thing, it is far from obvious 
to me that tsunamis larger than 10s of meters would be a natural result. 
Since simulations seem to show everything from a few meters to 100 meters or 
so, I think I'll just reserve judgment until those simulations settle down.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <kelly at bhil.com>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" 
<meteorite-list at resalehost.networksolutions.com>
Cc: "Ron Baalke" <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] LANL: Meteor Could Cause Big Tsunami


> Hi,
>
>    Newspaper science strikes again! Or is it reporter science?
>    The impact of an 800 meter asteroid "near" Florida (300 kilometers?) 
> would
> produce a wave more 10 feet tall? Duh!
>    This is an impact with more than 35,000,000,000 tons of TNT equivalent 
> and
> would displace the ocean to a depth of 3500 meters in a "wet" crater 15 
> kilometers
> across.
>    The tidal wave at the Florida cost would be hundreds of meters high (if 
> not
> thousands)! It would kill every human inhabitant of Florida and most all 
> the
> gators! You could stand on the highest point in Florida (near Micanopi) 
> and watch
> it roll right over you (if you were anchored in concrete) hundreds of feet 
> above.
>    Can we persuade Sue to go there and report on it if it happens?
>
> Sterling K. Webb