Physics
Scientific paper
May 1997
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997nyasa.822..381h&link_type=abstract
Near-Earth Objects, the United Nations International Conference: Proceedings of the international conference held April 24-26, 1
Physics
3
Aerial Explosions, Aerodynamic Brakes, Asteroids, Earth Atmosphere, Fragmentation, Impact Damage, Water Waves, Appalachian Mountains (North America), Continental Shelves, Craters, Destruction, Tsunami Waves, Water Depth
Scientific paper
The fragmentation of a small asteroid in the atmosphere greatly increases its cross section for aerodynamic braking, so ground impact damage (craters, earthquakes, and tsunami) from a stone asteroid is nearly negligible if it is less than 200 meters in diameter. A larger one impacts the ground at nearly its velocity at the top of the atmosphere producing considerable impact damage. The protection offered by Earth's atmosphere is insidious in that smaller, more frequent impactors such as Tunguska only produce air blast damage and leave no long term scars on the Earth's surface, while objects 2.5 times larger than it, which hit every few thousand years, cause coherent destruction over many thousands of kilometers of coast. Smaller impactors give no qualitative warning of the enormous destruction wrought when an asteroid larger than the threshold diameter of 200 meters hits an ocean. A water wave generated by an impactor has a long range because it is two-dimensional, so its height falls off inversely with distance from the impact. When the wave strikes a continental shelf, its speed decreases and its height increases to produce tsunamis. The average runup in height between a deep-water wave and its tsunami is more than an order of magnitude. Tsunamis produce most of the damage from asteroids with diameters between 200 meters and 1 km. An impact anywhere in the Atlantic by an asteroid 400 meters in diameter would devastate the coasts on both sides of the ocean by tsunami over 100 meters high. An asteroid 5 km in diameter hitting in mid Atlantic would produce tsunami that would inundate the entire upper East Coast of the United States to the Appalachian Mountains. Studies of ocean sediments may be used to determine when coastal areas have been hit by tsunamis in the past. Tsunami debris has been found to be associated with the Cretaceous-Tertiary impact and should be detectable for smaller impacts.
Hills Jack G.
Mader Charles L.
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