Seems like an impact is unlikely but undetermined at this point, but it’s going to make a very close pass. Impact force would be ~800 teratons of TNT at current estimates on it’s mass and speed, and that’s the small estimate. As a comparison the one that killed the dinosaurs was something like 100-200 teratons by a quick search, so it would be a big one.
We’d probably lose most of our Mars tech if it did hit, but there would be a lot of new science to explore. Is the debris from the tail alone likely to be a danger to the rovers and satellites if it just makes a close pass? Could this dump a significant amount of water on Mars from the comet itself or the tail?
That’s the coolest thing I’ve read about in a while. It would suck to lose all our Mars probes and explorers, but it would be the coolest thing ever if the comet impacted.
Any thoughts on what would happen if this struck earth? I am thinking with only about 19 months notice, even 10 years notice, nothing could be done to save any hope of civilization surviving. Do we need to address the mine shaft gap in the next budget? Would being undergroud do any good? Would there be massive planetary wide earth quakes that would cave in any underground bunkers?
I understand the impact energies involved are truly astronomical. (I link here often enough to the Impact Calculator…) Still, why must the impact inevitably annihilate all of the Mars rovers and orbiters? Mars’s atmosphere is quite small, and I wouldn’t think that it would transmit shock all that well.
Let’s reduce the scale of the solar system to one that would fit in a soccer field… This is a cool website.
Say the Sun is a ball, about 8 inches in diameter. The earth would be the size of a peppercorn. Mars would be a pinhead.
At it’s closest approach to Earth, Mars would be about 14 yards away. When Mars is furthest from Earth, it would be about 40 yards away. I’m not sure where the planets will be positioned when the comet approaches, but lets guess in the middle;
So the peppercorn (Earth) and the pinhead (Mars) are about 25 yards apart when the fleck of dust (comet) comes close to (or hits) the pinhead.
I don’t think we here on Earth have much to worry about.
ETA: Do the exercise on the website - you’ll get an appreciation for how much nothingness is in the solar system, and just how really, really, really far apart the planets are.
What are the odds of some part of the comet hitting Phobos and/or Deimos? They’re not exactly big targets, but conversely the effect would be significant if they got hit.
