Asteroid explosion was a whopper for Earth
Experts say space rock blast may have been (sic) in more than a decade
On Oct. 8, reports from Indonesia told of a loud air blast around 11 a.m. local time. One report indicated a bright fireball, accompanied by an explosion and lingering dust cloud, as the origin of the air blast.
the blast is thought to be due to the atmospheric entry of an asteroid more than 30 feet in diameter. Due to atmospheric pressure, the object is thought to have detonated in the atmosphere, yielding an energy release of about 50 kilotons (the equivalent of 110,000,000 pounds of TNT explosives).
Aero wrote: ...the web site concluded that there would be an air burst at 500 meters, on the order of 1.86 x 100 Megatons, and it would break some glass.
Maybe I'm not using the site correctly, but a 186 Megaton air burst at 1500 feet will cause some damage, more than just breaking glass.
Actually, for those parameters, I think that should be read 1.86 x 10^0 megatons, not x 10^2.
How far away were you? I couldn't make it run by choosing a 0km distance from impact.
How far away were you? I couldn't make it run by choosing a 0km distance from impact.
I don't remember now. I was close, either 1 km or 0.1 km I think, but certainly less than 10 km. I did try 6 km for some runs. But it could have been anywhere between 0.1 km and 10 km in whole numbers of km (except 0.1, which is not a whole number.) I couldn't make it run for 0 km either.
Of course, a 1.86 Megaton blast at that altitude will do some damage, too. I did multiple runs progressively closer to ground zero. I think I was hoping that the program would give a more descriptive damage report, starting at ground zero and progressively more distant until their was no direct damage. Instead, it gives a damage report at the chosen distance.
Aero wrote: ...the web site concluded that there would be an air burst at 500 meters, on the order of 1.86 x 100 Megatons, and it would break some glass.
Maybe I'm not using the site correctly, but a 186 Megaton air burst at 1500 feet will cause some damage, more than just breaking glass.
Actually, for those parameters, I think that should be read 1.86 x 10^0 megatons, not x 10^2.
How far away were you? I couldn't make it run by choosing a 0km distance from impact.
Playing with some numbers I could not get similar numbers. Depending on the speed I input for a 10 meter iron asteroid I got reasonable energies in the kilotons range. Deatination was always above 100,000 meters, even when I input 30,000 for the speed. This gave high energies like you reported, but stilll deatination above 100,000 meters.
Aero,are you sure you are inputing the speed correctly? The units are meters per second, not kilometers per hr.
I checked back to my original post and found that I quoted a 25 meter asteroid. But I can't reproduce anything like the numbers I saw before, either. And as I posted then, maybe I was using bad input. Bad in the sense of not being within the realm of possibility. Who knows, but I've got nothing ...