[meteorite-list] Comet impact!
star-bits at comcast.net
star-bits at comcast.net
Wed Apr 5 16:34:33 EDT 2006
Dave Harris wrote:
<Amazing to see that the copper target that clouted the Comet Tempel 1
kicked out 250,000 tons of water when it collided!
There a great lot of info on the Web on this, but I wonder how this fits in
with how there's so much water on Earth....was it transported via cometary
collisions or the product of chemical reactions (or both, indeed!)?>
250,000 tons of water sounds like a lot, but to put it into perspective it would fill a:
cube 200.08 feet on a side
football field including endzones to a height of 138.9 feet
official soccer field max size 360x240 feet to a height of 92.6 feet
cylinder radius 200 feet would have a height of 63.7 feet
cylinder radius 300 feet would have a height of just 8.6 feet
cone radius 300 feet would have a height of 85 feet
If you say a cone roughly approximates a crater shape and the comet is half water half other stuff by volume then a cone radius 300 feet would need a depth of 170 feet to accommodate 250000 tons of water. That is a big hole, but still smaller than most people would image when they think of 250,000 tons of water.
--
Eric Olson
ELKK Meteorites
http://www.star-bits.com
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