Where does the asteroid go when it hits the earth?

Question

In other words, when a metorite hits the earth's suftace and creates a dent where does the asteroid go?

Answer 1

It goes to asteroid heaven.

Actually, it depends on the size of the asteroid. A relatively small one will break up into fragments, most of which will burn up in the atmosphere, with the biggest crashing into the earth, where it probably will be blown apart. Bigger ones will have a larger percent of the mass reaching the earth, where it will be blown apart. Much bigger than that, and noone has to worry about the asteroid, but rather the earth.

Answer 2

When you throw a snowball at a wall as hard as you can, where does the snowball go? Where would it go if you could throw it as fast as a bullet?

Any asteroid hitting Earth, will do so at 11 kms per second upwards. That is sufficient to completely annihilate the object. In fact, there is so much energy expended by the halting of a body at that speed, that stony asteroids up to 100 metres across will likely be annihilated by their contact with the atmoshere, let alone the solid Earth.

Why do you think a bullet can kill you, while if I throw a pebble at you of the same size, you would only get a bruise at the most? Kinetic energy. A moving object contains energy that is expended when that body's progress is halted. The faster it moves the more the energy. In fact 10 times the speed - 100 times the energy. And asteroids are travelling relative to Earth at many times faster than a rifle bullet.

Then there is mass (weight). The larger the object, the more kinetic energy it has.

This means that an asteroid just 50 metres across will impact with energy equivalent to the largest nuclear weapons.

PS - dent is a bit of an understatement. The Chixculub crater in Mexico is nearly 200 kms across and was many kilometers deep. Some "dent", eh?

Answer 3

Well, well...a mixing of terms meets my eyes again. i cannot escape them.

Meteors are masses of space dust and ice that fly through space and streek (show bright heads and long tails) across the sky as they enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up. Some may have metallic content within them and actually penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and land somewhere on Earth. Those are called "mereorites." Only the little ones that land on Earth are called meteorites.

Now, and Asteroid is a much different critter. An Asteroid is a solid body, smaller than a planet. Most of those asteroids orbit the Sun in a belt called the Asteroid Belt which is between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids may be made up of Iron, Nickle, and other metals, have a silica composition, or be a mix of everything. In flying around in their orbits, asteroids may collide with each other breaking up into thousands of smaller pieces. If a piece happened to fall to Earth, it would become a mereorite.

There are well over a billion assteroids out there and about 200,000 have been cataloged so far. In general they are masses of material that somehow failed to get collected up in formation of planets long ago. Asteroids range in size from 596 miles in diameter to the size of a pebble. Only the ones that are about 200 miles in diameter are round like a ball. There are some 200 that are larger than 125 miles in diameter. Within the Asteroid Belt there are about a billion asteroids which measure over 1 mile in diameter.

When an object that is something like a mile in diameter hits the Earth it forms a huge impact crater. The heavy metal core of the Asteroid or meteorite often gets buried way deep down into the Earth's crust, and huge amounts of debris from the impact are blown up and out of the crater. Dust clouds may form and, depending upon the size of the crater, may shoot up into the Earth's upper atmosphere for miles. Molten fragments from the impact may litter the surface of the Earth for miles around the crater site.

Hope some of this helps you out.

Good Luck,
Zah

Answer 4

It doesn't go anywhere because it breaks up into little pieces. You will find pieces of it all around the impact site. And it's a crater, not a dent. No meteorite will make a "dent" if it's big enough to actually hit the Earth

Answer 5

It desentigrates some uppon entry, even more uppon the intense heat and pressure of impact. What of it isn't vamporised becomes part of the crater. That's one of the ways they test craters to see if they are impact sites. Meteors have a higher occournce of certian heavy metals that are very rare on Earth. When they find a crater with a 'lot' of them, they know they probably have an impact site.

Answer 6

Some explode in the atmosphere and scatter. Some bury themselves deeply below the crater. Some make relatively soft landings, intact. Mass, speed angle of entry, shape, composition, and the surface at the landing site are all factors.

Answer 7

It's usually smashed to bits which are scattered around and downwind of the impact site. Sometimes large chunks survive intact, though, and they're usually at the bottom of the crater.

Answer 8

it hits with enough force to pulverize itself to many many pieces. sometimes though a big enough chunk remains intact .

and I hate to sound trivial or petty but a Meteor hits the earth.
a meteorite is anything left of the meteor on the ground.
now do you mean meteor or asteroid?

Answer 9

It is totally destroyed, with some remnants left behind at the center of the impact crater, and in debris that falls in secondary impacts.

Answer 10

The asteroid hall-of-fame museum.