Humans didn't exist back then. But taking into account how much destruction and change it did to all life on earth, if this event never happened, would we have still evolved into current humans?
Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
111–120 of 156 posts
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Research at Imperial College, London, shows that far from being rare events, rogue waves can emerge frequently, and may be responsible for some of the 200 supertankers and container ships longer than 200m that have sunk in poor weather conditions in the past two decades. The loss of ten ships a year seems incredible to me. Surely "weather", if it were to blame, could be avoided. This amount of loss is steep. Is it…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1326758/number-of-oil-ta... : There were 8,883 oil tankers worldwide in 2021. If those are all ocean-going, ten a year is about 1.1%. Depending on how expensive it would be to prevent this, that may not be bad for ship owners, but it is very bad for those seeking a career in working on those ships.
Relative to what other transportation profession, though? Pilots, truck drivers, train operators? All of them have deadly accidents.
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#113> 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...
If you work in finance and your competitors attended those universities you have an edge.
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#114> 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...
I'm no expert on stats, this discussion is a bit over my head, but it reminds me that not all distributions have a mean. A Cauchy distribution has no mean; as you average successive samples, it never settles down to a consistent average. I was surprised when I first encountered Cauchy distributions and up until then had considered that all distributions would have a mean. I suppose it is one of those "heavy-tailed" d…
It’s an example but long tailed distributions can have a mean, and short tailed distributions can have no mean. It’s not indicative.
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There was a lot more to worry about than the wave. Anything within about 1500 km of the impact site was instantly vaporised. Then afterwards the whole atmosphere was oven-hot for several minutes. Then there was very little sunlight for decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFCbJmgeHmA
Is it the consensus that the entire planet's atmosphere was oven hot from re-entering ejecta, or is that just one particular model? I've heard various claims about the dinosaur extinction event, from the nuclear winter type scenario to all the non-avian ones dying with in an hour to a day after the impact. I've also heard different nuclear holocaust scenarios from the nuclear winter lasting as long as 10-15 years, to there being no nuclear winter, all depending on whether the burning material reaches the stratosphere in large amounts.
Safe to say we don't have real world examples to test at planetary scale, so I'm a little skeptical as to how accurate any of these models are. We just know the result was a planetary-scale extinction event for at least 60% of life, although there is also the possibility of multiple impacts, and previous volcanic activity aiding the extinction.
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#116Just 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.
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Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#117That seems like a bad model if it does not include the effects of the waves penetrating inland and instead acts as if the coasts are inviolable.
Most of these asteroid impact models are also missing the secondary impact events from ejecta. For very small asteroids it's not much of a concern but anything large enough to be dangerous would kick out enough material to create a storm of falling superheated boulders. Big enough asteroids can blast stuff into orbit which then falls all over the Earth.
Superheated as opposed to plainly-heated?
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
There’s a solid amount evidence showing that there was some kind of abnormal volcanic winter in 536.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536
Whether it was “the worst year in history” is probably tough to quantify and prove, though.
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#119Who needs this when theres the last two seasons of The Expanse?
I found the last two seasons somewhat disappointing. Still a good show, but the first four were a lot stronger. I did go read the books, so I know what happens over the last three books. It's a real shame they didn't have more seasons to cover the Laconia plot, other than to tease it in the last season with the Strange Dogs novella material. The problem with the last two seasons is the heavy focus on Sol politics a full season after the gates were opened and the big alien mystery is left hanging.
Re: Simulation of tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid that brought 2.5 mile waves
#120Are 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.
Or volcanic eruptions were going on prior to the impact. They are implicated in most of the other global extinction events.