OT- Impact of an asteriod hitting Eastern USA

[Phoenix-D]

Originally posted by oleg:

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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
Narf, nuke warheads are always measured in kilotons of TNT, the amount of that required to produce an equvilent explosion.

The problem is in space, you have no air. No air and you have no overpressure, no bLast wave..no concusive effects. Its conciveable that even the space shuttle could survive a fairly near miss with a nuke in space, most of the force is lost.

I doubt that. It is still a HUGE amount of energy reliased. Lack of air removes the shock wave, but insted we will have a stream of sublight-speed particles that are no longer opposed by atmosphere density. We will still have the same sort of "front wave", now propogating with the speed of light. If you remember from nukes explosions, staff around the center was evaporated. It is caused by photons, not a shockwave !

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And the shuttle has these nice heat-resisting tiles. Depends how "near" the near miss is I suppose, though you're right the shrapnel might be nasty.