Target Earth: Asteroid and Comet Impacts

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Target Earth: Asteroid and Comet Impacts by Philip Plait discusses issues involving what effects meteors, meteoroids, meteorites, asteroids, and comets have on Earth. Earth gets hit by twenty to forty tons of meteors every day. Most of it is detritus, a material made up of small rocks that burn up in the atmosphere. Detritus is what we see when we see a "shooting star". The big question is; how is something so small, so bright? The first reason is that compressing air heats it up, the more a gas is compressed, the hotter it gets and the hotter it gets, the brighter it gets. The second reason is the objects speed. When it enters the atmosphere at a high velocity, the velocity is transferred into energy which is transferred into the air around it. Most of the time the bigger rocks crumble into pieces before they hit the ground, which creates an explosion. Medium-sized meteors normally disintegrate in the atmosphere. Smaller rocks that hit the ground usually don't have much of an impact. The massive impact of an asteroid 65 million years ago caused huge destruction to Earth. As the asteroid got closer to Earth, it would have created a huge shock wave, heating everything miles around it. Also, the intensity of the light coming off of the asteroid would have set everything on fire. It impacted water, which would have caused most of the areas to explode into steam. After the ground shock there was an air shock, causing most creatures to become deaf once the wave reached them. In the end, the whole planet would be on fire. Although asteroid have predictable orbits, comets can come from anywhere in the solar system. Comets also give us a shorter time to prepare for impact. Even most small comets could have disastrous impacts. Even though we can try to stop asteroids and comets from

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