That a meteorite will fall. Meteorites that fell to Earth: the very best (6 photos)

Last year, astronomers predicted more than once or twice that a celestial body would fall to Earth. In February, the American agency NASA predicted that a giant asteroid would fall to Earth. It was assumed that it would fall into the ocean and cause a supertsunami.

It was also indicated that this would happen near Great Britain, as a result of which the coastal residents were quite agitated. It was assumed, but no one can ever say anything about this for sure. Because a celestial body can either pass by our planet or still fall on it.

When will a meteorite fall on Earth in 2018: to date, assumptions about asteroids falling on Earth, fortunately, have not come true

In February it happened - a meteorite flew past and NASA’s assumptions, fortunately, did not come true.

Then they began to scare earthlings in March, then an asteroid hundreds of times larger than Chelyabinsk was supposed to land on Europe - that too. Then - in October, TS4 40 meters in diameter, the fall of which was supposed to leave a trace in the form of a huge crater - again lucky, it didn’t fall.

Astronomers usually have approximate data - both on the size and on the trajectory of the celestial body. After all, asteroids glow during flight, and therefore it is quite difficult to accurately determine their size. Moreover, once in the Earth’s atmosphere, the mass will be less due to the partial combustion of the space guest in it.

Fortunately, today, all celestial bodies that threatened Mother Earth either flew at a distance from her, or burned up in the layers of the atmosphere and turned into a safe meteor shower, which is a meteor shower and does not threaten earthlings in any way.

This was the case at the end of 2017, when astronomers were frightened by the approach of a meteorite threatening to fall on Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan or Samara. In February 2013, both the Chelyabinsk guest from space and the Yekaterinburg guest had approximately the same trajectory - the celestial bodies seem to like this route.

Fortunately, not all of them fall to Earth; most often, they pass tangentially to our planet and do not cause any harm. All celestial bodies migrating in the Universe are carefully observed in different parts of the Earth by astronomers and astrophysicists. After all, it is possible that the orbit of this or that meteorite will change for some reason and then it may well become a dangerous guest for our planet.

When a meteorite falls on Earth in 2018: scientists are closely monitoring the trajectory of the giant asteroid

This difficult issue remains relevant this year. Judging by the starfall calendar, 2018 is no safer than last year - the likelihood of meteorites falling to Earth remains just as high. But scientists will be able to say anything for sure about the fall of a cosmic body only after it enters the earth’s atmosphere, disintegrating into a meteor shower. Until then, scientists can only guess which of the asteroids may be dangerous for earthlings.

For example, the meteorite that successfully missed the Earth at the end of 2017 is flying towards it again - it changed its orbit, colliding with another meteorite flying near the Moon. Now its flight path is oriented directly towards the Earth. But no one can say for sure how the journey of this space guest will end.

Here is a video confirming that a meteorite may fall to Earth in 2018:

When this may happen, time will tell. If it ends up in the Earth’s atmosphere, it may burn up, perhaps it will disintegrate into meteor showers. Perhaps TV 145 also threatens the Earth - scientists are closely monitoring this giant asteroid, which has already flown quite close to the Earth.

5 years ago, on February 15, 2013 at 9:20 (7:20 Moscow time), residents of Chelyabinsk, as well as the Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, Tyumen regions, part of northern Kazakhstan, witnessed a rare astronomical phenomenon - the appearance of a bright superbolide (a very bright large meteor - fragment space object) moving in a westerly direction. The movement of the fireball was accompanied by several flashes (perceived by eyewitnesses as explosions due to strong pops heard after some time), the brightest of which lasted, according to various sources, from one to five seconds, while the heat from it was felt, stronger than from the Sun during the day.

Later, witnesses to the event said that it was painful for them to look at the car. About 25 people out of 1.1 thousand respondents reported that they received burns, 315 felt heat, and 415 felt heat from the fireball's radiation. One of the local residents received such severe burns to his face that his skin began to peel off, as if from an extremely strong tan.

The meteorite (a space object that flew through the atmosphere and fell to the ground), later named "Chelyabinsk", turned out to be "sounding": witnesses heard electrophone sounds - the so-called strange crackling sounds that are sometimes heard during the flight of a fireball. Such sounds cannot come from the cosmic body itself; scientists believe that they are provoked by electromagnetic fields arising during its flight.

Numerous meteorite fragments fell over a large area - almost the entire Chelyabinsk, along with its suburbs, fell into the zone of their fall.

The shock wave in Chelyabinsk knocked out windows and doors, the impact fell on the ventilation systems of houses, and part of the wall of a building on the territory of a zinc plant collapsed. The Ural Lightning ice palace and the buildings of the South Ural State University were seriously damaged. The impact zone of the shock wave on the surface was about 130 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide.

On the map of the village and city, where the glass was knocked out by the shock wave, a characteristic “butterfly” was formed, the wings of which were deployed perpendicular to the flight path of the car. Researchers of the Tunguska event found approximately the same “butterfly” on the forest fall map almost a hundred years ago. After the Tunguska meteorite, this is the first time in Russia when the invasion of a fireball into the atmosphere was accompanied by destruction.

There were no casualties in the emergency, but more than 1.6 thousand people were injured, mainly due to cuts from broken windows.

The economic damage from a meteorite fall in the Chelyabinsk region exceeded 1.2 billion rubles.

The fall of a meteorite was captured for the first time in history. The proof is a large number of eyewitnesses, videos, photographs and instrumental data collected by the expedition of the Russian Academy of Sciences. An unprecedentedly rapid and fairly complete scientific analysis of the event was carried out, including the effects that accompanied it.

According to NASA, on February 15 at 9:20.20 local time, a meteorite entered the Earth's atmosphere near the border between Russia and Kazakhstan. It moved from the direction of the Sun in a western direction. Due to its small angle with respect to the Sun (about 15 degrees), the meteorite was not detected by asteroid observation systems. In addition, modern telescopes are focused on searching for asteroids (inert cosmic rocky bodies) larger than 100 meters in diameter (according to modern ideas, starting from this size, cosmic bodies can cause catastrophic destruction on Earth), and according to scientists, the initial size of a meteorite is " Chelyabinsk" was less than 20 meters, and therefore the penetration of this space object into the atmosphere went unnoticed.

13 seconds later, the meteorite, which by this time had turned into a bright fireball, reached the peak of its luminosity at an altitude of 23.3 kilometers, practically ceasing to exist. On Earth, this event was observed as a powerful explosion, after which the bolide continued its movement, but significantly weakened its brightness and after a few seconds disappeared completely.

American seismologists recorded the moment the body exploded - a shock of magnitude 4.0 was observed approximately a kilometer southwest of the center of Chelyabinsk. Russian seismic stations recorded an earthquake accompanying the explosion with a magnitude of 3.2 in the area of ​​Yemanzhelinsk, located 50 kilometers from Chelyabinsk. For comparison, the fall of the Tunguska meteorite caused an earthquake, the magnitude of which is estimated at 5.0.

The first estimates of the power of the explosion near Chelyabinsk, obtained from infrasound stations of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organization, gave a value of about 470 kilotons of TNT, later data from infrasound stations in Russia and Kazakhstan - 570 kilotons. At the same time, optical and infrared observation data from satellites showed that energy equivalent to 90 kilotons was “exposed” in the form of radiation alone, which corresponds to the total explosion energy of 590 kilotons (plus or minus 50).

The bolide began to glow at an altitude of 97.1 kilometers when it entered the atmosphere at a speed of 19.16 kilometers per second. It reached its highest brightness at an altitude of 29.7 kilometers - at this moment its brightness reached a magnitude of minus 27.3, despite the fact that the magnitude of the Sun is minus 26.7, which means that the fireball shone about 30 times brighter.

Scientists estimated the mass of the object before entering the atmosphere at 13 thousand tons, and its transverse size at 19.8 meters (according to other estimates from 16 to 19 meters).

Only 4-6 tons of meteorite substance reached the ground, which is 0.03-0.05% of the original mass, while 76% of the substance evaporated, and the rest turned into dust. The fireball explosion created a giant dust ring in the upper atmosphere that encircled the entire northern hemisphere of the Earth and remained in the stratosphere for at least three months after the event.

The largest piece of meteorite weighing 654 kilograms was lifted in the fall of 2013 from Lake Chebarkul (Chelyabinsk region) from a depth of 20 meters. When weighed, it split, and a fragment weighing 540 kilograms was transferred to the Chelyabinsk State Museum of Local Lore. Later, his weight began to decrease due to the evaporation of water that entered him while in the lake. In 2015, he weighed 503.3 kilograms. Another meteorite fragment became an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History of France.

Studies of fragments of a celestial body have shown that this is an ordinary chondrite of type LL5 - one of the types of stony meteorites. Its age is about 4.45 billion years. Approximately 290 million years ago, the Chelyabinsk meteorite experienced a major catastrophe - a collision with another cosmic body. This is evidenced by dark veins in its thickness - traces of melting of the substance during a powerful impact. However, scientists believe that this was a very “fast” process. The traces of cosmic particles - the tracks of iron nuclei - did not have time to melt, which means that the “accident” itself lasted no more than a few minutes. At the same time, it is possible that traces of melting could have appeared during the asteroid’s too close approach to the Sun, according to scientists from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy (IGM) SB RAS.

Scientists from the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences stated that the space object once broke off from a relatively large asteroid.

Chemical analysis showed that the meteorite contained traces of organic compounds containing sulfur and oxygen. After the fireball explosion, residents smelled sulfur or a burning smell for a whole day, which appeared an hour after the explosion.

Scientists calculated that the Chelyabinsk cosmic body was located in the main asteroid belt of the Solar System, the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, where the trajectories of many small bodies pass. The orbits of some of them, in particular, the Apollo and Aten group asteroids, are elongated and can cross the Earth's orbit.

The Chelyabinsk meteorite turned out to be the largest known celestial body to fall to Earth since the Tunguska meteorite in 1908. Such an event occurs on average once every 100 years, and according to some data, more often, up to five times a century.

After the fall of a meteorite in the Chelyabinsk region, the “space threat” worries specialists more and more. Scientists have found that small asteroids about one meter in size enter the Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate there about once every two weeks. Humanity is not yet able to oppose anything to larger space objects. Scientists also emphasize that cosmic bodies coming from the daytime sky cannot be detected in a timely manner using any ground-based means.

For this reason, NASA, Roscosmos and other space agencies are actively working on developing systems for detecting asteroids even before approaching the Earth, and are thinking about creating “space defense” means.

The first product of this kind was the Scout system, developed by NASA and successfully tested in the fall of 2016. She discovered an asteroid with a diameter of five to 25 meters and determined the distance to which it would approach the Earth, five days before its approach to the planet. In 2018, NASA plans to launch into orbit a whole brood of NEA Scout microsatellites, which will help the ground-based “scout” fill the gaps in knowledge about asteroids like the one in Chelyabinsk. When such an object approaches the Earth, one of the probes will fly up to it, take detailed photographs of its surface, and also “feel” it to study the structure of its interior and chemical composition.

In Russia, in 2016, the RAS Space Council approved the parameters of a project to create a system for monitoring cosmic bodies. The research projects are called "System for the detection of daytime asteroids" (SODA) and "SODA-detection". The system will make it possible to detect celestial bodies with a diameter of more than ten meters four hours before the expected time of entry into the atmosphere. The SODA project involves the construction of a spacecraft that will be sent to one of the Lagrange points - L1, located at a distance of one and a half million kilometers from Earth. It is planned to place a telescope there that will examine the space around the Earth.

At the beginning of 2018, scientists reported that Russia began to develop a system for tracking dangerous asteroids, Nebosvod, consisting of two constellations of satellites - in Earth and solar orbits. It is being developed by the Russian corporation Kometa.

In the meantime, no country is technically capable of destroying space objects in the atmosphere like the Chelyabinsk meteorite.

TASS DOSSIER. On December 6, 2016, a meteorite exploded in the sky over Khakassia. Three flashes were recorded, the hum was heard in the Abakan area.

As stated by Viktor Grokhovsky, a member of the Committee on Meteorites of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor at the Ural Federal University, the meteorite is several times smaller than its Chelyabinsk “brother” that fell into Lake Chebarkul in February 2013.

Meteorites are solid natural bodies of cosmic origin that fall onto the surface of a large celestial object, such as a planet. They can consist of minerals (stone meteorites), metals (iron) and be of a mixed type (iron-stone).

The Earth's surface reaches 9% of the mass of all meteorites. According to a number of scientists, a meteorite squall with a total mass of approximately 21.3 tons hits our planet every year. According to statistics, only one out of 100 thousand meteorites has destructive power. Most of the meteorites found on Earth have a mass from a few grams to several kilograms.

Most often, meteorites fall in Antarctica: according to experts, about 700 thousand of them are scattered on the mainland. The largest accumulation of meteorites on a limited surface area, discovered in 1979, is also located there. The most massive meteorite - weighing more than 60 tons - was found in Namibia in 1920 g., it received the name Goba.

Cases of meteorites falling on populated areas are extremely rare: only a few such facts are known. Moreover, only twice did falling celestial bodies injure people (1954, Alabama, USA; 2004, UK).

The first reliably recorded meteorite fall in world history dates back to November 16, 1492. This happened near the French village of Ensisheim in the Upper Rhine region. The stone that fell from the sky weighed about 127 kg. His fall was witnessed by numerous eyewitnesses, including the famous German artist and graphic artist Albrecht Durer. He sketched this event on a small wooden board measuring 23x17 cm.

Chronology of five known cases of large meteorite falls in the 20th - 21st centuries

June 30, 1908 over the river basin. A meteorite fell in Podkamennaya Tunguska in Eastern Siberia, which later received the name “Tunguska”. As a result, in the air, when the celestial body entered the dense layers of the atmosphere, an explosion with a power of about 50 Mt in TNT equivalent occurred. The shock wave devastated up to 2 thousand square meters. km. To date, over 5 thousand fairly large fragments of the Tunguska meteorite have been found.

On February 12, 1947, a meteorite weighing more than 23 tons (one of the ten largest in the world) was recorded in the Primorsky Territory. It was named Sikhote-Alin after the name of the mountains over which the meteorite scattered iron rain over an area of ​​35 square meters. km.

On March 8, 1976, a meteorite weighing over 4 tons fell in northeast China. It was named Kirin.

On February 8, 1969, the Allende meteorite fell in northern Mexico. When it fell, it shattered into many fragments. About 2-3 tons of fragments were collected. Allende is considered the largest carbonaceous meteorite found on Earth.

On February 15, 2013, a meteorite fell in the area of ​​Lake Chebarkul, Chelyabinsk region, which received the official name “Chelyabinsk” (also known as “Chebarkulsky”). The meteor shower was observed by residents of five regions of Russia at once - Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan regions and Bashkiria. Most of the fragments fell into the lake. In October 2013, fragments with a total mass of 654 kg were recovered from Chebarkul; in March 2014, the largest fragment weighing several tons was found at the bottom of the lake.

The previous post assessed the danger of an asteroid threat from space. And here we will consider what will happen if (when) a meteorite of one or another size does fall to Earth.

The scenario and consequences of such an event as the fall of a cosmic body to Earth, of course, depends on many factors. Let's list the main ones:

Size of cosmic body

This factor, naturally, is of primary importance. Armageddon on our planet can be caused by a meteorite 20 kilometers in size, so in this post we will consider scenarios for the fall of cosmic bodies on the planet ranging in size from a speck of dust to 15-20 km. There is no point in doing more, since in this case the scenario will be simple and obvious.

Compound

Small bodies of the Solar System can have different compositions and densities. Therefore, there is a difference whether a stone or iron meteorite falls to Earth, or a loose comet core consisting of ice and snow. Accordingly, in order to cause the same destruction, the comet nucleus must be two to three times larger than an asteroid fragment (at the same falling speed).

For reference: more than 90 percent of all meteorites are stone.

Speed

Also a very important factor when bodies collide. After all, here the transition of kinetic energy of motion into heat occurs. And the speed at which cosmic bodies enter the atmosphere can vary significantly (from approximately 12 km/s to 73 km/s, for comets - even more).

The slowest meteorites are those that catch up with the Earth or are overtaken by it. Accordingly, those flying towards us will add their speed to the orbital speed of the Earth, pass through the atmosphere much faster, and the explosion from their impact on the surface will be many times more powerful.

Where will it fall

At sea or on land. It is difficult to say in which case the destruction will be greater, it will just be different.

A meteorite may fall on a nuclear weapons storage site or a nuclear power plant, then the environmental damage may be greater from radioactive contamination than from the meteorite impact (if it was relatively small).

Angle of incidence

Doesn't play a big role. At those enormous speeds at which a cosmic body crashes into a planet, it does not matter at what angle it will fall, since in any case the kinetic energy of movement will turn into thermal energy and be released in the form of an explosion. This energy does not depend on the angle of incidence, but only on mass and speed. Therefore, by the way, all craters (on the Moon, for example) have a circular shape, and there are no craters in the form of trenches drilled at an acute angle.

How do bodies of different diameters behave when falling to Earth?

Up to several centimeters

They completely burn up in the atmosphere, leaving a bright trail several tens of kilometers long (a well-known phenomenon called meteor). The largest of them reach altitudes of 40-60 km, but most of these “specks of dust” burn up at altitudes of more than 80 km.

Mass phenomenon - within just 1 hour, millions (!!) of meteors flash in the atmosphere. But, taking into account the brightness of the flashes and the observer’s viewing radius, at night in one hour you can see from several to dozens of meteors (during meteor showers - more than a hundred). Over the course of a day, the mass of dust from meteors deposited on the surface of our planet is calculated in hundreds and even thousands of tons.

From centimeters to several meters

Fireballs- the brightest meteors, the brightness of the flash exceeds the brightness of the planet Venus. The flash may be accompanied by noise effects, including the sound of an explosion. After this, a trail of smoke remains in the sky.

Fragments of cosmic bodies of this size reach the surface of our planet. It happens like this:

At the same time, stone meteoroids, and especially ice ones, are usually crushed into fragments due to explosion and heating. Metal ones can withstand pressure and fall onto the surface entirely:

Iron meteorite "Goba" measuring about 3 meters, which fell "entirely" 80 thousand years ago on the territory of modern Namibia (Africa)

If the speed of entry into the atmosphere was very high (oncoming trajectory), then such meteoroids have much less chance of reaching the surface, since the force of their friction with the atmosphere will be much greater. The number of fragments into which a meteoroid is fragmented can reach hundreds of thousands; the process of their fall is called meteor Rain.

Over the course of a day, several dozen small (about 100 grams) fragments of meteorites can fall to Earth in the form of cosmic fallout. Considering that most of them fall into the ocean, and in general, they are difficult to distinguish from ordinary stones, they are found quite rarely.

The number of times a meter-sized cosmic bodies enter our atmosphere is several times a year. If you are lucky and the fall of such a body is noticed, there is a chance to find decent fragments weighing hundreds of grams, or even kilograms.

17 meters - Chelyabinsk bolide

Supercar- this is what is sometimes called especially powerful meteoroid explosions, like the one that exploded in February 2013 over Chelyabinsk. The initial size of the body that then entered the atmosphere varies according to various expert estimates, on average it is estimated at 17 meters. Weight - about 10,000 tons.

The object entered the Earth's atmosphere at a very acute angle (15-20°) at a speed of about 20 km/sec. It exploded half a minute later at an altitude of about 20 km. The power of the explosion was several hundred kilotons of TNT. This is 20 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, but here the consequences were not so fatal because the explosion occurred at a high altitude and the energy was dispersed over a large area, largely away from populated areas.

Less than a tenth of the meteoroid's original mass reached Earth, that is, about a ton or less. The fragments were scattered over an area more than 100 km long and about 20 km wide. Many small fragments were found, several weighing kilograms, the largest piece weighing 650 kg was recovered from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul:

Damage: Almost 5,000 buildings were damaged (mostly broken glass and frames), and about 1.5 thousand people were injured by glass fragments.

A body of this size could easily reach the surface without breaking into fragments. This did not happen due to the too acute angle of entry, because before exploding, the meteoroid flew several hundred kilometers in the atmosphere. If the Chelyabinsk meteoroid had fallen vertically, then instead of an air shock wave breaking the glass, there would have been a powerful impact on the surface, resulting in a seismic shock, with the formation of a crater with a diameter of 200-300 meters. In this case, judge for yourself about the damage and number of victims; everything would depend on the location of the fall.

Concerning repetition rates similar events, then after the Tunguska meteorite of 1908, this is the largest celestial body to fall to Earth. That is, in one century we can expect one or several such guests from outer space.

Tens of meters - small asteroids

The children's toys are over, let's move on to more serious things.

If you read the previous post, then you know that small bodies of the solar system up to 30 meters in size are called meteoroids, more than 30 meters - asteroids.

If an asteroid, even the smallest one, meets the Earth, then it will definitely not fall apart in the atmosphere and its speed will not slow down to the speed of free fall, as happens with meteoroids. All the enormous energy of its movement will be released in the form of an explosion - that is, it will turn into thermal energy, which will melt the asteroid itself, and mechanical, which will create a crater, scatter earthly rock and fragments of the asteroid itself, and also create a seismic wave.

To quantify the scale of such a phenomenon, we can consider, for example, the asteroid crater in Arizona:

This crater was formed 50 thousand years ago by the impact of an iron asteroid with a diameter of 50-60 meters. The force of the explosion was 8000 Hiroshima, the diameter of the crater was 1.2 km, the depth was 200 meters, the edges rose 40 meters above the surrounding surface.

Another event of comparable scale is the Tunguska meteorite. The power of the explosion was 3000 Hiroshima, but here there was a fall of a small comet nucleus with a diameter of tens to hundreds of meters, according to various estimates. Comet nuclei are often compared to dirty snow cakes, so in this case no crater appeared, the comet exploded in the air and evaporated, felling a forest over an area of ​​2 thousand square kilometers. If the same comet exploded over the center of modern Moscow, it would destroy all the houses right up to the ring road.

Drop Frequency asteroids tens of meters in size - once every few centuries, hundred-meter ones - once every several thousand years.

300 meters - asteroid Apophis (the most dangerous known at the moment)

Although, according to the latest NASA data, the probability of the Apophis asteroid hitting the Earth during its flight near our planet in 2029 and then in 2036 is practically zero, we will still consider the scenario of the consequences of its possible fall, since there are many asteroids that have not yet been discovered, and such an event can still happen, if not this time, then another time.

So... the asteroid Apophis, contrary to all forecasts, falls to Earth...

The power of the explosion is 15,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. When it hits the mainland, an impact crater with a diameter of 4-5 km and a depth of 400-500 meters appears, the shock wave demolishes all brick buildings in an area with a radius of 50 km, less durable buildings, as well as trees falling at a distance of 100-150 kilometers from the place falls. A column of dust, similar to a mushroom from a nuclear explosion several kilometers high, rises into the sky, then the dust begins to spread in different directions, and within a few days it spreads evenly across the entire planet.

But, despite the greatly exaggerated horror stories that the media usually scare people with, nuclear winter and the end of the world will not come - the caliber of Apophis is not enough for this. According to the experience of powerful volcanic eruptions that took place in the not very long history, during which huge emissions of dust and ash also occur into the atmosphere, with such an explosion power the effect of “nuclear winter” will be small - a drop in the average temperature on the planet by 1-2 degrees, after Six months or a year everything returns to its place.

That is, this is a catastrophe not on a global, but on a regional scale - if Apophis gets into a small country, he will destroy it completely.

If Apophis hits the ocean, coastal areas will be affected by the tsunami. The height of the tsunami will depend on the distance to the place of impact - the initial wave will have a height of about 500 meters, but if Apophis falls into the center of the ocean, then 10-20 meter waves will reach the shores, which is also quite a lot, and the storm will last with such mega-waves. there will be waves for several hours. If the impact in the ocean occurs not far from the coast, then surfers in coastal (and not only) cities will be able to ride such a wave: (sorry for the dark humor)

Recurrence frequency events of similar magnitude in the history of the Earth are measured in tens of thousands of years.

Let's move on to global disasters...

1 kilometer

The scenario is the same as during the fall of Apophis, only the scale of the consequences is many times more serious and already reaches a low-threshold global catastrophe (the consequences are felt by all of humanity, but there is no threat of the death of civilization):

The power of the explosion in Hiroshima: 50,000, the size of the resulting crater when falling onto land: 15-20 km. Radius of the destruction zone from blast and seismic waves: up to 1000 km.

When falling into the ocean, again, everything depends on the distance to the shore, since the resulting waves will be very high (1-2 km), but not long, and such waves die out quite quickly. But in any case, the area of ​​flooded territories will be huge - millions of square kilometers.

The decrease in atmospheric transparency in this case from emissions of dust and ash (or water vapor falling into the ocean) will be noticeable for several years. If you enter a seismically dangerous zone, the consequences may be aggravated by earthquakes provoked by an explosion.

However, an asteroid of such diameter will not be able to tilt the Earth’s axis noticeably or affect the rotation period of our planet.

Despite the not-so-dramatic nature of this scenario, this is a fairly ordinary event for the Earth, since it has already happened thousands of times throughout its existence. Average repetition frequency- once every 200-300 thousand years.

An asteroid with a diameter of 10 kilometers is a global catastrophe on a planetary scale

• Hiroshima explosion power: 50 million
• The size of the resulting crater when it falls on land: 70-100 km, depth - 5-6 km.
• The depth of cracking of the earth's crust will be tens of kilometers, that is, right up to the mantle (the thickness of the earth's crust under the plains is on average 35 km). Magma will begin to emerge to the surface.
• The area of ​​the destruction zone can be several percent of the Earth's area.
• During the explosion, a cloud of dust and molten rock will rise to a height of tens of kilometers, possibly up to hundreds. The volume of ejected materials is several thousand cubic kilometers - this is enough for a light “asteroid autumn”, but not enough for an “asteroid winter” and the beginning of an ice age.
• Secondary craters and tsunamis from fragments and large pieces of ejected rock.
• A small, but by geological standards, decent tilt of the earth’s axis from the impact - up to 1/10 of a degree.
• When it hits the ocean, it results in a tsunami with kilometer-long (!!) waves that go far into the continents.
• In the event of intense eruptions of volcanic gases, acid rain is subsequently possible.

But this is not quite Armageddon yet! Our planet has already experienced even such enormous catastrophes dozens or even hundreds of times. On average this happens once once every 100 million years. If this happened at the present time, the number of victims would be unprecedented, in the worst case it could be measured in billions of people, and besides, it is unknown what kind of social upheaval this would lead to. However, despite the period of acid rain and several years of some cooling due to a decrease in the transparency of the atmosphere, in 10 years the climate and biosphere would have been completely restored.

Armageddon

For such a significant event in human history, an asteroid the size of 15-20 kilometers in quantity 1 piece.

The next ice age will come, most of the living organisms will die, but life on the planet will remain, although it will no longer be the same as before. As always, the strongest will survive...

Such events also happened repeatedly in the world. Since the emergence of life on it, Armageddons have happened at least several, and perhaps dozens of times. It is believed that the last time this happened was 65 million years ago ( Chicxulub meteorite), when dinosaurs and almost all other species of living organisms died, only 5% of the chosen ones remained, including our ancestors.

Full Armageddon

If a cosmic body the size of the state of Texas crashes into our planet, as it happened in the famous film with Bruce Willis, then even bacteria will not survive (although, who knows?), Life will have to arise and evolve anew.

Conclusion

I wanted to write a review post about meteorites, but it turned out to be an Armageddon scenario. Therefore, I want to say that all the events described, starting from Apophis (inclusive), are considered theoretically possible, since they will definitely not happen in the next hundred years at least. Why this is so is described in detail in the previous post.

I would also like to add that all the figures given here regarding the correspondence between the size of the meteorite and the consequences of its fall to Earth are very approximate. Data in different sources differ, plus the initial factors during the fall of an asteroid of the same diameter can vary greatly. For example, it is written everywhere that the size of the Chicxulub meteorite is 10 km, but in one, as it seemed to me, authoritative source, I read that a 10-kilometer stone could not have caused such troubles, so for me the Chicxulub meteorite entered the 15-20 kilometer category .

So, if suddenly Apophis still falls in the 29th or 36th year, and the radius of the affected area will be very different from what is written here - write, I’ll correct it

223 years ago, on July 24, 1790, in Southwestern France, near the Gascony town of Barbotan, in the department of Gers, a meteorite fell, about which the Academy of Sciences was immediately notified. This was the first time a meteorite falling from the sky was officially witnessed. By the way, the French Academy of Sciences simply did not believe the Gascon authorities - at the end of the 18th century, scientists thought that meteorites did not fall to Earth from outer space. Only in 1803 was the reality of the “celestial” origin of meteorites officially recognized by them. It is now believed that meteorites are fragments of asteroids and comets. Meteorites are named after the places where they were found. You look into the starry sky - it’s beautiful! When you think that something like that could fly in and make a noise, you feel scared and uncomfortable.

“Komsomolskaya Pravda” has prepared the Top 10 largest and most famous meteorites that fell on our land.

Khoba meteorite, Namibia, 80 thousand years ago

This is the largest meteorite that has ever fallen on our planet. The Sky Stone weighed 66 tons and was composed of cobalt and nickel. He landed in one of the regions of African Namibia 80 thousand years ago, but we can say that he just accidentally ran into our world, because the age of the stone itself is 100 million years.

Tunguska meteorite, Siberia, Russia, 1908

The “Messenger of Heaven” fell in 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7 - 10 km above an uninhabited taiga region. The blast wave circled the globe twice and was recorded by observatories around the world. The power of the explosion is estimated at 40 - 50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb. The explosion knocked down trees over an area of ​​more than two thousand square kilometers, after which a magnetic storm began. Although the explosion occurred in a sparsely populated area, the flight of the fiery body was observed by residents of the village closest to its location. Later it was possible to calculate the flight speed of the meteorite - 10 kilometers per second. Body weight ranged from 100 thousand to a million tons.

Sikhote-Alin meteorite, Primorsky Krai, USSR, 1947

A meteorite weighing 23 tons fell on February 12, 1947 at 10.38 am near the village of Beitsukhe in the Primorsky Territory. The fall was accompanied by a bright fireball, which was observed in the Khabarovsk and Primorsky territories, within a radius of up to 400 km. The trail was visible in the sky for several hours. After the fall, blows and roars were heard, and in some places the shaking of the ground was felt. Murchison meteorite, Australia, 1969

Fell in Australia in 1969 near the town of Murchison. The total weight of the Murchison meteorite was 108 kilograms. The meteorite is interesting because scientists discovered a large number of organic compounds in it - more than 14 thousand, including at least 70 amino acids.

Scientists estimate that the meteorite is 4.65 billion years old, meaning it formed before the appearance of the Sun, which is estimated to be 4.57 billion years old.

Allende meteorite, Chihuahua, Mexico, 1969

The famous Allende meteorite fell in 1969 in the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico. Allende is the largest carbonaceous meteorite that has been found on Earth. This meteorite formed about 4.567 billion years ago.

When Allende fell, it broke up into many fragments, the total weight of which is estimated at 2-3 tons, and the total weight of the meteorite could reach 5 tons. Meteorite fragments are kept in many museums around the world.

Scientists discovered in its composition a previously unknown mineral pangit, containing both chemical elements common in nature and rare zirconium and scandium.

Jilin meteorite, Jilin, China, 1976

In 1976, as a result of the strongest meteor shower in the last century, the stone meteorite Jilin fell to Earth in China. Its total weight is 4 tons.

The largest meteorite fragment weighs 1,770 kilograms.

Meteorite Kunya-Urgench, Turkmenistan, 1998

It happened on June 20, 1998 at 17:25 local time. The weather was clear. That's why everyone immediately noticed a large dark cloud located along the trajectory of the car. A few seconds later there was a strong blow and vibrations of the ground. The mass of the meteorite was 820 kg, the crater formed in the cotton field was 5 m. The meteorite became the third largest in the world and, according to the observations of local residents, it was brighter than the sun - its light cast shadows on large objects.

Vitimsky car, Irkutsk region Russia, 2002

On the night of September 24-25, 2002, the Vitimsky fireball fell near the villages of Mama and Vitimsky in the Irkutsk region. According to the stories of local residents, its radiance was so bright that the night taiga became as bright as day. The explosion energy was 200 tons of TNT equivalent. The final mass of fragments that fell to the ground was several hundred kilograms. The explosion felled a forest over an area of ​​approximately 60 km, the fire zone was 6 km. Titicaca. About the fall: the collision with the ground formed a 30 m crater with a depth of 6 m. Perhaps the meteorite consisted of toxic substances. People living near the scene began to experience headaches, and 1,500 people were injured.

Chelyabinsk meteorite, Chelyabinsk, 2013

The most terrible “space invasion” in the modern history of Russia occurred on the morning of February 15, 2013 at approximately 9.20 am.

A meteoroid with a diameter of about 17 meters and a mass of about 10 thousand tons entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 18 km/s. Judging by the duration of the atmospheric flight, the entry occurred at a very acute angle. About 32 seconds after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite disintegrated. The explosion occurred in the vicinity of Chelyabinsk at an altitude of 15-25 km.

All this was accompanied by a powerful shock wave. The total amount of energy released, according to various estimates, ranged from 400 kilotons to 1.5 megatons of TNT equivalent. This is the largest known celestial body to fall to Earth since the Tunguska meteorite in 1908.

The shock wave injured 1,613 people, most from broken windows. According to various sources, from 40 to 112 people were hospitalized; two victims were placed in intensive care. In terms of the number of victims, the fall of this meteoroid has no analogues in the world's documented history, although in Chinese sources there are references to fatal cases associated with the fall of meteorites. The shock wave also damaged buildings. Material damage is tentatively estimated at between 400 million and one billion rubles.