19. Near-Earth Objects Chelyabinsk Meteor: 2013 ~0.5 Megaton Airburst ~1500 People Injured

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Astronomy 241: Foundations of Astrophysics I 19. Near-Earth Objects Chelyabinsk Meteor: 2013 ~0.5 megaton airburst ~1500 people injured (C) Don Davis Asteroids 101 — B612 Foundation Great Daylight Fireball: 1972 Earthgrazer: The Great Daylight Fireball of 1972 Tunguska Meteor: 1908 Asteroid or comet: D ~ 40 m ~10 megaton airburst ~40 km destruction radius The Tunguska Impact Tunguska: The Largest Recent Impact Event Barringer Crater: ~50 ky BP M-type asteroid: D ~ 50 m ~10 megaton impact 1.2 km crater diameter Meteor Crater — Wikipedia Chicxulub Crater: ~65 My BP Asteroid: D ~ 10 km 180 km crater diameter Chicxulub Crater— Wikipedia Comets and Meteor Showers Comets shed dust and debris which slowly spread out as they move along the comet’s orbit. If the Earth encounters one of these trails, we get a Breakup of a Comet meteor shower. Meteor Stream Perseid Meteor Shower Raining Perseids Major Meteor Showers Forty Thousand Meteor Origins Across the Sky Known Potentially-Hazardous Objects Near-Earth object — Wikipedia Near-Earth object — Wikipedia Origin of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) ! WHAM Mars Some fragments wind up on orbits which are resonant with Jupiter. Their orbits grow more elliptical, ﬁnally entering the inner solar system. Wikipedia: Asteroid belt Asteroid Families Many asteroids are members of families; they have similar orbits and compositions (indicated by colors). Asteroid Belt Populations Inner belt asteroids (left) and families (right). Origin of Key Stages in the Evolution of the Asteroid Vesta Processed Family Members Crust Surface Magnesium-Sliicate Lavas Meteorites Mantle (Olivine) Iron-Nickle Core Stony Irons? As smaller bodies in the early Solar System Heavier elements sink to the Occasional impacts with other bodies fall together, the asteroid agglomerates. center as the asteroid heats. break off pieces of the crust, exposing This forms a separate core, the mantle. mantle, and outer crust. Lava from the interior flows to the surface. Hubble Maps the Ancient Surface of Vesta PR95-20 • ST ScI OPO • April 19, 1995 • B. Zellner (GA Southern Univ.), NASA A fragment of Vesta Hubble Maps the Ancient Surface of Vesta Chicxulub Impactor: A Possible Timeline 1. Baptistina parent body (170 km diameter) smashed ~160 Myr ago. Large Asteroid Breakup — Don Davis 2. Fragment hits Moon, forming Tycho crater (110 Myr ago). 3. Fragment hits Earth, forming Chixulub (65 Myr ago)..

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Cross-References ASTEROID IMPACT Definition and Introduction History of Impact Cratering Studies
18 ASTEROID IMPACT Tedesco, E. F., Noah, P. V., Noah, M., and Price, S. D., 2002. The identification and confirmation of impact structures on supplemental IRAS minor planet survey. The Astronomical Earth were developed: (a) crater morphology, (b) geo- 123 – Journal, , 1056 1085. physical anomalies, (c) evidence for shock metamor- Tholen, D. J., and Barucci, M. A., 1989. Asteroid taxonomy. In Binzel, R. P., Gehrels, T., and Matthews, M. S. (eds.), phism, and (d) the presence of meteorites or geochemical Asteroids II. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, pp. 298–315. evidence for traces of the meteoritic projectile – of which Yeomans, D., and Baalke, R., 2009. Near Earth Object Program. only (c) and (d) can provide confirming evidence. Remote Available from World Wide Web: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ sensing, including morphological observations, as well programs. as geophysical studies, cannot provide confirming evi- dence – which requires the study of actual rock samples. Cross-references Impacts influenced the geological and biological evolu- tion of our own planet; the best known example is the link Albedo between the 200-km-diameter Chicxulub impact structure Asteroid Impact Asteroid Impact Mitigation in Mexico and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Under- Asteroid Impact Prediction standing impact structures, their formation processes, Torino Scale and their consequences should be of interest not only to Earth and planetary scientists, but also to society in general. ASTEROID IMPACT History of impact cratering studies In the geological sciences, it has only recently been recog- Christian Koeberl nized how important the process of impact cratering is on Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria a planetary scale.
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