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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

#51

Post by herewulf »

geuis wrote: 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 article reads to me like the 4.5 km wave was an initial "splash" which dissipated but the actual tsunami was "only" 1.5 km high. Imagine throwing a good sized rock into a pond: Big initial splash, then smaller waves radiate out. Of course, to observe the proper effect, you would need to throw your rock at 20 km/s into shallow water.

> a curtain of ejected material pushed a wall of water outward from the impact site, briefly forming a 4.5 kilometers high (2.8 miles) wave that subsided as the ejecta fell back to Earth. Ten minutes after the projectile hit the Yucatan, and 220 kilometers (137 miles) from the point of impact, a 1.5 kilometers high (0.93 miles) tsunami wave—ring-shaped and outward-propagating—began sweeping across the ocean in all directions

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

#52

Post by tempestn »

nerdponx wrote: post #37
12907835202 wrote: post #30

If this were to happen today now much evidence would be find of our current civilisations? Would archeologists be able to figure out our cities?

I get the impression that there might not be any archaeologists left after such an event.

A few humans might survive. If not, there might be other archaeologists, eventually...

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

#53

Post by yodon »

12907835202 wrote: post #30

If this were to happen today now much evidence would be find of our current civilisations? Would archeologists be able to figure out our cities?

Asking how you could tell if Dinosaurs had a civilization like ours used to be a standard Geology Dept. PhD orals question. Their cities would of course be long long, so that's not a productive search area. The answer is you'd look at the distribution of minerals. If they built cities with skyscrapers they would have had to mine the materials required to make them. There is no evidence the Dinosaurs exploited their available mineral sources but millions of years from now there will still be ample evidence that we did.

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

#54

Post by gl-prod »

geuis wrote: 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.

Is it closer to Interstellar's wave planet?

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

#56

Post by unwind »

Wow, very impressive visualization. Minor editing needed in the bullet point factoids:

The amplitude of the wave animated here reached 1.5 km miles high (0.93 miles) but the initial wave might have reached 4.5 kilometers high (2.8 miles).

Also, I think they could have gone with "1.6 km (1 mile)" or maybe "1.5 km (about 1 mile)" perhaps. Oh well.

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

#58

Post by Tepix »

GalenErso wrote: post #11
brink wrote: post #10

I remember those waves on interstellar being a scarier adversary than Pennywise from IT. It must have been quite a sight. I wonder if any of the creatures from the event felt fear before the water washed over them.

I have long said that if I was given the chance to go back in time just once, and come back, I would return 66 million years ago to witness the meteor impact from the safety of a space shuttle. And now I have an idea for Elon Musk: interplanetary disaster tourism. Purposefully crash asteroids on remote areas of Mars and charge for front row seats. This would have the added benefit of bringing valuable metal ores to b…

To terraform mars we'd need 3500 nukes per day for 7 weeks. That would be quite a show!

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

#59

Post by m_mueller »

gl-prod wrote: post #54
geuis wrote: 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.

Is it closer to Interstellar's wave planet?

more like Deep Impact's wave I'd imagine. Though the wavefront there probably looks too sharp?

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

#60

Post by m_mueller »

GalenErso wrote: post #11
brink wrote: post #10

I remember those waves on interstellar being a scarier adversary than Pennywise from IT. It must have been quite a sight. I wonder if any of the creatures from the event felt fear before the water washed over them.

I have long said that if I was given the chance to go back in time just once, and come back, I would return 66 million years ago to witness the meteor impact from the safety of a space shuttle. And now I have an idea for Elon Musk: interplanetary disaster tourism. Purposefully crash asteroids on remote areas of Mars and charge for front row seats. This would have the added benefit of bringing valuable metal ores to b…

LEO may not even be safe, would it? Afaik a large part of the damage was the heating of the atmosphere from enormous amounts of secondary impacts due to the debris - many of these small rocks probably flung up into LEO, though it would be interesting to know how risky a stay in LEO would be during such an impact.

If you want a SciFi story touching many such topics I highly recommend "Seveneves" by Neal Stephenson.

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