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Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

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Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#21
post #14
post #5

There are a large number of events taht have happened many times in Earth's history and, given the cosmic timelines, will happen again, repeatedly. Some may be preventable with technology (eg asteroid impacts), others less so. A partial list is: tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, supervolcanoes, flood basalts, asteroid impacts, magnetic field reversals, climate change (eg ice once covered the equator, North America us…

The Carrington event where a solar flare turned telegraph wires into those electromagnetd you build in elementary school. The current from the storm electrified all the telegraph cables. This would be bad for anything we've built that has a long cable run... https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh... Or how 536 was the worst year on record (and no one really knows why) https://podcasts.google.com…

> Or how 536 was the worst year on record

Although I didn't listen to the 11 minute podcast, I was curious to know basically what it was about. This is what Wikipedia says about year 536:

"In 2018, medieval scholar Michael McCormick nominated 536 as 'the worst year to be alive' because of the extreme weather events probably caused by a volcanic eruption early in the year, causing average temperatures in Europe and China to decline and resulting in crop failures and famine for well over a year. Other researchers have noted additional adverse events during the year, including a mysterious fog, possibly due to the volcanic eruption."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/536

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#22
post #12

Just to put the numbers in slightly easier to imagine numbers: imagine ocean waves about 13000 feet or 4 kilometers high. No, I can't really imagine it either. In San Francisco, the tallest building is the Salesforce Tower at 1070ft. The biggest wave would be about 13 times taller than that. I totally have trouble visualizing it, other than just looking up and up and up.

The best hope would be that the mountains and ground whittle it down and that it drains quickly. May explain why rodents survived, in that dry to moderately dry ground doesn't soak up water quickly, so if it drained away before the burrows were soaked/drowned, there is a chance at survival.

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#23
I wonder how they simulate the displacement of water since it's not from how tsunamis usually occur. A lot of water you think would be vaporised into the air and moved with the shockwaves. Plus there is only so much water at the impact site, not an unlimited amount. Given the speed of the impact, would it move as much water? They say when you jump off a bridge, the impact is like hitting cement.

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#24

Are we sure an asteroid killed the dinosaurs? Vulcano erruption leaving the earth in darkness for a prolonged time is another theory.

We are reasonably sure, yes. Significantly more sure since January 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinctio...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/science/dinosaurs-extinct...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay5055

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7382232/

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#25
post #2

As cool as that is, I'm more interested in seeing how far inland the waves would go.

The press release says that there are plans to look at inundation. https://news.umich.edu/dinosaur-killing-asteroid-triggered-g... They do say that airborne water and sediment traveled several hundred kilometers.

It also has some more details about wave height: "their models indicate that open-ocean wave heights in the Gulf of Mexico would have exceeded 100 meters (328 feet), with wave heights of more than 10 meters (32.8 feet) as the tsunami approached North Atlantic coastal regions and parts of South America’s Pacific coast."

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#26
> 30,000 times more initial energy than any recorded events

As a statistician: this is why heavy-tailed modeling matters. Schools teach the finite-variance version of the Central Limit Theorem and students believe they live in a normal world. The real Central Limit Theorem [1] predicts large rare events following Lévy α-stable distributions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_distribution#A_generali...

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#27

Are we sure an asteroid killed the dinosaurs? Vulcano erruption leaving the earth in darkness for a prolonged time is another theory.

Why can't it be both such big impact could have resulted in a volcanic eruptions.

Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves

#28
post #21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Carrington event where a solar flare turned telegraph wires into those electromagnetd you build in elementary school. The current from the storm electrified all the telegraph cables. This would be bad for anything we've built that has a long cable run... https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh... Or how 536 was the worst year on record (and no one really knows why) https://podcasts.google.com…

> Or how 536 was the worst year on record Although I didn't listen to the 11 minute podcast, I was curious to know basically what it was about. This is what Wikipedia says about year 536: "In 2018, medieval scholar Michael McCormick nominated 536 as 'the worst year to be alive' because of the extreme weather events probably caused by a volcanic eruption early in the year, causing average temperatures in Europe and Ch…

A single source of quote, and I really doubt we can find anything related in recorded history. The history books of China definitely didn't mention anything significant about year 536.
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