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Merry Christmas: NASA Says Earth Is Due An Extinction-Level Event

Merry Christmas: NASA Says Earth Is Due An Extinction-Level Event

At least it'll stop the elf on the shelf trend.

Anonymous

Anonymous

Snow is falling, all around us, time for an asteroid, to hit the planet. Not a jingle but a statement of fact, apart from the fact it's not snowing and as asteroid probably won't be ruining your turkey and trimmings plans.

That said, we're overdue for a big-off asteroid to clatter into Earth. Merry Christmas. Yippee ki-yay, mother fuckers!

Indeed, now that NASA isn't putting people into space any more, it has to content itself with freaking us out with predictions of world disaster.

It's been 50-60 million years since the last extinction level disaster - when the dinosaurs were wiped out - and, according to scientists, these kind of events happen every 50-60 million years. The time is nigh.

Credit: YouTube

Great. So we're due another one, and NASA says that we have zero chance of stopping it. What the hell was Armageddon all about, then?

These men will not help. Credit: Touchstone Pictures

Scientists have been looking into what would happen if a big asteroid did hit us. Small asteroids are more common than you would think - they hurtle towards the Earth but explode before they get through the atmosphere. No harm done.

If a big asteroid were to strike the Earth's surface, it will probably hit water. The Earth is 71 per cent ocean, after all. So that's good, right?

Wrong - scientists are worried a big asteroid hitting the water would cause a big tidal wave - and other problems.

The scientists at Los Alamos National Lab wanted to find out if an asteroid hitting the ocean would wipe out all life on the continents - like in Deep Impact.

God, how many of these movies are there? Credit: Paramount/DreamWorks

Turns out, we won't all die... instantly, but an asteroid hitting the Earth could cause climate chaos. Water vapour and water could be thrown back into the stratosphere and that wouldn't be great for global warming, putting it mildly.

It could stay there for months or years as water vapour is a really strong greenhouse gas. Who knew?!

Studying the tsunami wave, a crater is made by the impact and what scientists call a "splash curtain". Water would rush into the crater and make a water jet which could be several kilometres high. The jet would collapse and make a rim wave, which would rise hundreds of metres high. And then a new water jet would form, creating a new rim wave! And so on - this process would go on for a while and each rim wave could become a tsunami.

Not quite sure what I just wrote but it seems very scary.

Words Laura Hamilton

Featured Image Credit:

Topics: Asteroid

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