http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Siding_Spring


so cool

with the force of 10 billion megabomb

3/27/2013 6:52:33 AM

What's a megabomb

3/27/2013 8:32:22 AM

1 in 1250 is pretty long odds, but still cool.

3/27/2013 9:27:58 AM

with the force of 10 billion megabomb

3/27/2013 11:50:49 AM

would it mean anything for us if a comet were to hit mars?

3/27/2013 12:16:20 PM

CHUNKS OF MARS ARE GOING TO FLY OUT AND HIT EARTH!!!!

3/27/2013 12:21:38 PM

it would give us tons of invaluable data. I don't think an impact would pose any danger of sending significant debris our way.

3/27/2013 12:25:09 PM

jcgolden in the running for quote of the year

3/27/2013 1:32:36 PM

You have no chance to survive make your time.

3/27/2013 1:35:00 PM

20 billion megatons. Thats 200 times the magnitude of the one that killed off all the dinos.

3/27/2013 1:49:19 PM

That's also if the comet is 50 km (the high end of the current estimation) across but they're guessing it's more like 4km.

3/27/2013 2:07:07 PM

Move over Newtons! The new unit for force is billion megabomb!

3/27/2013 2:55:50 PM

would that throw off the rotation of Mars around the sun and thus throw off the entire gravitational pull of the solar system?

3/27/2013 8:40:00 PM

we need to wake up and start preparing for the day something hits earth.

3/27/2013 9:00:28 PM

wake up sheeple!

3/27/2013 9:01:31 PM

It might hit Uranus too!

3/27/2013 9:02:15 PM

That is a load of megabombs.

3/27/2013 10:45:38 PM

better than uranus being penetrated

3/28/2013 12:14:17 AM

Quote :

"we need to wake up and start preparing for the day something hits earth."

Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck would save us

3/28/2013 2:09:59 AM

damnit! we spent all that money on those rovers and now they're going to get destroyed by a fucking comet.


well, time to go to mars and get our robots.

3/28/2013 8:11:47 AM

Quote :

"20 billion megatons. Thats 200 times the magnitude of the one that killed off all the dinos."

It's over 9000.

3/28/2013 9:03:13 AM

Quote :

"we need to wake up and start preparing for the day something hits earth."

This is actually a legit concern. Current asteroid observation telescopes only cover something like 10% of the sky.

"If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, we would be the laughing stock of aliens in the galaxy, for having a large brain and a space program, yet we met the same fate as that pea-brained, space program-less dinosaurs that came before us." - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

3/28/2013 9:07:32 AM

Quote :

"would it mean anything for us if a comet were to hit mars?"

I would think almost certainly...and not anything good.

3/28/2013 9:38:26 AM

how so?

3/28/2013 1:51:53 PM

^^Why? Outer planets sucking in all the comets/asteroids is a good thing for us. Mars is a really long way away and I doubt even a 10 billion megabomb could send debris out of orbit from it.

[Edited on March 28, 2013 at 1:52 PM. Reason : ^^]

3/28/2013 1:52:43 PM

^^^ If it hit mars directly, it would throw up a lot of dust in the martian atmosphere. That would probably dirty the rovers' solar panels and make then stop working.

Unless they're near the impact site.. then they're toast :-P

[Edited on March 29, 2013 at 11:40 PM. Reason : ]

3/29/2013 11:38:47 PM

prolly not dust cloud because atmosphere so thin. also, the rovers are at the ecuador and the comet going to hit at the south pole

3/30/2013 12:14:09 AM

ha dust storms happen on mars all the time, and occasionally envelop the whole planet... WITHOUT a comet impact.

3/30/2013 12:27:37 AM

shut up fool. im talking about dust for like 1000 years blocking out the sun.

also they say the rocks at the impact will be hot for millions of years. we could put up a colony there!

3/30/2013 12:44:47 AM

man this is crazy man, fuck man

3/30/2013 1:05:21 AM

on another not, i an curious where you get your scientific news. i first heard about this comet from the science section of The Economist. i would love to know about something more quicker and more sciencey.

3/30/2013 1:30:34 AM

So any chance we can see this comet soon?

4/1/2013 2:50:31 PM

Every time I see "AU" I have to be reminded what it means. What a useless unit of measure.

4/1/2013 3:12:26 PM

Quote :

"the rovers are at the ecuador"

I studied abroad on Mars.

4/1/2013 3:23:34 PM

Quote :

"Every time I see "AU" I have to be reminded what it means. What a useless unit of measure."

it's actually a very convenient and intuitive unit of measure when studying the solar system.

4/1/2013 3:28:57 PM

Quote :

"To gain a sense of scale as to how far one AU is, if the Sun were to be scaled down to the size of an NBA basketball (24 cm diameter) then the Earth would be half the diameter of a .177 caliber BB pellet, and at this scale one AU is the distance between the two hoops on a basketball court."

4/1/2013 3:30:30 PM

1.21 jigabombs

4/1/2013 8:50:47 PM

This looks like chit chat to me.

4/2/2013 7:46:54 AM

There is some evidence that MArs' wet past was disrupted by a similar type of catastrophic impact (but much worse than the one itt).

We already have Martian meteorites falling to earth too, this could at least make the night time sky more interesting and increase the chances of an air burst explosion like in Russia.

4/2/2013 8:38:59 AM

last i heard chance was around 1/8k scratchoff territory

4/15/2013 10:46:33 AM

As of 8 April 2013, the odds of impact are only 1 in 120,000

4/16/2013 3:16:51 PM

Quote :

"Every time I see "AU" I have to be reminded what it means. What a useless unit of measure."

I think parsec takes the tamale for least intuitive measure of distance ever.

4/16/2013 3:32:37 PM

That's what the Martians deserve for Pearl Harbor.

4/16/2013 6:28:05 PM

nobody excited about this comet anymore

5/8/2013 9:04:07 AM