They are tiny compared to the earth. I can hardly imagine they even wipe out lives within 1000km radiused area, which still is a tiny compared to the earths surface size. Asteroids are, just giant rocks right? not atomic bombs, wich gives an increasing explosion due to it’s chain reaction. So why?
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>Asteroids are, just giant rocks right? not atomic bombs, wich gives an increasing explosion due to it’s chain reaction.
The giant rock bit actually makes them *more* destructive. A 1 km diameter asteroid would be hitting earth at around 17 km/s and would have roughly 50 gigatons of energy. About 1000x more than the largest bomb we ever created
Nuclear weapons are also detonated in the air to avoid wasting energy on digging a hole. The big rock will plow into the ground and spew huge quantities of debris into the air
Nuclear weapons are impressive for their destructive potential in their limited size, but the energy in a big hunk of stone moving at orbital velocities is insane
They are travelling really, really, really fast. The faster something is moving, the more momentum it has, and the more destructive the impact.
Think of bullets.
Some bullets make bigger holes because there is more explosive power in the shell. The bigger bullets are bigger because they pack more gun powder. They make bigger holes for the same reason. It’s not the size of the slug that does all that damage alone, it’s also the explosive power behind it.
Planet Killers are either massive enough **or** going fast enough to earn their name. Scientists are referring to either of these factors when applying the label
They are giant rocks, which means they are very heavy. They are also very fast, moving at speeds in the region of 20 kilometers *per second*. Kinetic energy is (mass x velocity²)/2, so we’re talking a lot of energy here.
Even a small asteroid, the size of a boulder, would have the impact energy of an atomic bomb. A 1km asteroid would be around 1.4 billion tonnes, and release more energy than if every nuke on Earth were detonated at once.
https://www.real-world-physics-problems.com/asteroid-impact.html
“Planet killer” is a designation for any asteroid a kilometer in diameter or larger. They do not literally destroy the planet, but the force of the impact with the ground would launch enough dust and debris into the atmosphere to affect the amount of sunlight able to reach the surface for years. This would kill off a serious percentage of life on earth; that said, “most of the things that rely on sunlight directly or indirectly killer” is probably a little wordy.
It’s a very fast moving rock when it lands it kicks up lots of dust & debris into the stratosphere. This can create a mini ice age from the darkness, and cold of blocking out the sun. Which would kill a lot of animals either directly or from starvation from no vegetation
You also have the shock wave which would flatten buildings let alone plants and trees.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/asteroid-hits-earth.htm
Because kinetic energy is mass times speed squared, and because space rocks are REALLY fast.
A 1-km rock has a lot of mass, and these things are flying at 15,000 mph (~24,000 km/h relative to Earth. The mass of a rock 1 km across times (24,000 km/h)^(2) gives an unfathomably large amount of energy, just from kinetic energy alone with no further “explosion” necessary beyond just dumping all of that kinetic energy into a relatively small impact area. That much energy, mostly converted to heat, immediately vaporizes a huge amount of rock into a gas cloud that rapidly expands because rocks (like everything else) take up more space in the gas phase. That makes a giant scale explosion with no conventional or nuclear “explosives” needed.
It’s really hard to grasp how much energy things have when they’re going this fast, but a visual helps. Here’s the damage from a **14-gram piece of plastic** [hitting a block of solid aluminum](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/7w50a7/this_is_what_happens_to_aluminium_when_a_12_oz/) at typical meteor speeds. The crater is about 5 inches deep. A little piece of plastic has vaporized like 100x its mass of solid metal. Now scale up to what a rock 1 km across going that same speed can do. They really are planet-killers.
I throw a bullet at 30 mph, directly at your head. You say “Ow!” and we cease being friends. Now, still enraged, you get into a bus and run me down at the same speed of 30 mph. If I am not already dead, my body is broken and I spend my time in traction contemplating my revenge.
Discharged from the hospital, still seeking satisfsction for your savagery, I take another bullet, load it into my Remington 700 .308, aim it at your head and shoot. With a muzzle speed of just over 2,000 feet per second (1,400 mph), when the bullet reaches you, your head exolodes. I win.
Scale this up to Earth Size, and understand that asteroids can travel up to 18 kilometers per second, or 40,000 miles per hour! A rock the size of a small mountain going 40,000 mph ain’t just makin’ a pretty little mushroom cloud. It will vapourize hundreds, if not thousands of cubic kilometers of rock, lifting it into the sky, and will generate shockwaves that travel around the Earth for weeks causing catastrophic damage.
In this case, the 1 km diameter asteroid wins.
The German Leo2 uses “Wuchtgeschosse” against other tanks. These Munition doesn’t contain any explosives. It is made from very hard materials, like Wolfram. Combined with speed, they are able to destroy any tank on the world. Tanks are a lot bigger that one of these Munitions, but still they make the tank not working anymore after a direct hit.
Asteroids also doesent contain explosives, but they have Materie and Speed, a lot of Speed.
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